Originally Posted by
Master Oil Racing Team
I mentioned earlier the piston was not all I found when the lake got low. When the lake goes down, I find lots of flint chips in my lakefront yard, and both broken and complete arrowheads and spear points. On the other side of the lake from me a peninsula forms and is covered with arrowheads and spear points, but most are under the sand.
I had gone over one day to look for points and as I was walking through mud flats to the place where there were lots of flint sign, I saw what I thought was a softshell turtle shell sticking up halfway out of the mud. I thought it was kind of unusual because the are usually laying flat, and they disintegrate before they would settle in something like that. I walked over to this moss covered shell and was surprised when it did not pull apart. I pulled harder and it came up out of the mud. Was I surprised to see blue plastic, then I instantly recognized that it was a blue bubble shield. At first I thought to myself, "Man...they haven't made one of these in a long time. I haven't seen on since........" and just as 1968 popped into my mind the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I slowly turned around and got my bearings from where the old race course would have been and where the turn bouys were in relation to that. I stood there in awe. This was the blue bubble shield I was wearing when I flipped. Clayton Elmer had told me not to wear the blue because you cannot read the water. He was right. An amber bubble shield would have been the best and I never wore a blue again.
Here is the blue shield I found and an amber one that Alan Ishii gave me to put in my museum. The lake was much lower when I found the bubble shield than when I took the aerials.