Topic: The millionaire and the metal detector

[piersdad]

Years ago I built a metal detector from a magazine plan it was not very good but a bit of innovation it became really good at detecting  metal objects.
After finding a few small coins it was put aside.
One day the boss asked me if I still had it and could I use it for an urgent job.
A metal stamp had fallen and  got left in a 20 kg  box of meat.
It was one of 900 boxes  in the freezer of the freezing works
Whew 18,000 kg of frozen tenderloin meat ready for the overseas market and the companies logo  metal stamp plate was somewhere in it.
 At $30 a kg that  was serious money.
Well a quick trip home from work and the meat cartons were removed from the freezing chamber and passed in front of my metal detector.
Every now and then some thing was detected but usually just a bit of ice or some one had slipped a coin in the flap to check if the detector would work.
895 cartons went past and nothing and I could see the boss thinking  how to explain the loss of half million dollars of export meat.
896 th carton sent the detector off scale and sure enough there was this 50 mm metal stamp.
Well I was the hero of the day
 Some months later I go an urgent call from a friend.
Could I detect a  lost silver ring , no trouble I said.
Trouble was it was on a remote private island in the middle of the bay of islands north New Zealand.
.The person requesting the finding of his ring was a millionaire and was already spending up wild in the local town.
Well a trip in my old car to the harbor and I was picked up in a luxury launch and after a one hour sea trip we arrived at the private island
The millionaire was conservation minded and I spent the first hour or so helping him plant numerous trees on the flats in preparation for a future resort he planned there.
After this we went to the top of a large hill  to find the lost ring.
He indicated where it should be on the side of a steep slope and after much searching  there was no ring.
I asked him how long ago it was lost and he then told me it was 5 years ago.
I explained to him the with cattle grazing on the grass and chewing it at least 10 times a year the ring would have 50 chances of landing up in some cows stomach and would now be buried  anywhere on the 50 acres of island.
He was happy at this as he said it was an evil ring that brought him bad luck and he really did not want anyone else to find it and keep it.
The day was still young and he decided to do a bit of fishing.
So back on the launch we headed out to a good fishing ground nearby.
He asked the captain for his biggest hook and the captain produced a monster hook a good 100 mm long. He then asked for a large chunk of steak to bait it, explaining in a sort of bigheaded way, that if there was a fish big enough to take the bait he wanted it.

Well the line on the rod went out and the hook and bait sank to the bottom of the ocean like a sea anchor.
Ten minutes passed and he yelled ?I have got some thing? and started to reel the line in some times the fish put up a struggle some times it did not and really we thought  what sort of fish was it.
Soon it came to the top and  the only fish in the sea that had a mouth big enough to take the bait  but small enough to not put up a fight was a grandfather harpuka  a fish that had a mouth actually larger than its body.
I secretly thought just like my host all mouth and no substance.
Soon we parted company at the shore and he thanked me for my help and gave me a small radio listening devise he some time used  in his business.
Apparently this was a high tech for 1970 s and he used it to bug his business  associates by leaving it in a pack of   cigarettes on the board room table and retreat to the toilet and listen to the oppositions conversations and determine what the price they might go to in the negotiations.

It was some time later when I looked closely at a pack of cigarettes that I realized that the name of  my host for that lovely day out was on the pack.
He owned the tobacco company