On Father’s Day I decided to go to a local school to do a little metal detecting — it is a new hobby I picked up recently.

I have noticed that when trying to get permission to detect in certain places I get the cold shoulder. City officials and others seem to think people doing detecting will leave an area full of holes while we are digging.

The actions of a few should not define all of us. Members of Metal Detecting Maine follow a strict code of ethics when detecting. We leave areas in the same way we find them.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I took my detector out and started scanning the area when I got a nice hit. My detector was telling me the metal object was on the surface but the grass was fairly tall.

I was wearing gloves, which was lucky because as I passed my hand over the grass to sweep it aside, the gloves caught on something. I looked and it was the point of a piece of sheet metal sticking out of the ground. I dug up the rest of it and pulled it out and put it in my pouch.

Some child could have cut herself really badly on that.

Detecting that metal saved the school system unneeded problems it does not need to deal with right now.

So city officials and others should ease up a little on this great hobby.

Clem Bechard, Lewiston