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Okay, we need a drum roll 🥁! This man really needs no introduction. He doesn't need me to tell you what he means to this forum. He did need some convincing to accept this month's honor. So, with no further ado, please welcome Matt, better known as our one and only Hoss as this month's honoree!
I grew up in Western Connecticut. My Dad collected artifacts from 1931 until he passed away in 1997. It all started for me at a very young age. Dad took us out on digs and to corn fields in Towns that bordered the Housatonic river. We called the Housy our big back yard. We hunted sites from Milford and Stratford on the Coast of Long Island Sound up to New Milford and Kent CT. My first experiences started at about age five. Dad would take us into a field and hand my brother and I a paper bag. Show us what quartz looked like and say. Go pick up every white rock like this and don’t come back til the bag is full. LOL little did we know he did that so we would not ask him a bazillion times “ Is this one?” No telling if I found anything great in those early days as he would jus go through the bags and never say much.
When I was about 7 years old I was on a dig site with him and I left to go to the lake to skim rocks or fish because that is what a kid prefers at that age. Dad would call us and make us back fill the holes he and my older cousins dug. We would come running and he would hand us shovels and put us to work. While back filling I spotted a point tumble out of a clump of dirt and I dove on it. Dad was very proud and immediately took it away from me and said he would hang onto it for me. Some years later I spotted it in one of his frames. I asked for it back but was denied. LOL Later on my brother traded my Dad a gun for the frame. And now I get to visit my very first find. When I visit my brother back in CT. Sorry for rambling but after that find I was hooked. I rarely walked away to skim rocks in the lake after that. Since that time I have amassed quite a collection and I curate Dad’s collection to this day.
I am close to 60 years old now and have been studying and adding to the collection for more than 50 years. I now live in Tennessee and I do not get around so well, as I had an accident that left me with a bad back and knees. I do enjoy going to shows and swapping stories with other collectors and seeing a lot of great artifacts from other parts of the US.
Not sure what else to write. I am happy to be an admin on this site and I hope you all enjoy being here with us.
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