Trash to Treasure Loretta Hodge McCumbee is Columbus County’s own Indiana Jones Jefferson Weaver PHOTOS Justin Smith & Submitted by Loretta Hodge McCumbee STORY
L
oretta Hodge McCumbee loves pawing through trash. However, you won’t find her dumpster diving on a city street. Instead, McCumbee spends nearly every spare moment she has walking, crawling and sometimes wading through woods, forgotten homesteads and swamps, seeking old bottles, arrowheads, pottery, glassware and even prehistoric fossils. “My husband tells me I need to be looking out where I’m walking,” she laughed. “My eyes are always on the ground.” A love of history and art feed her passion for relic hunting, a hobby that was encouraged by her father, R.J. Hodge, when she was growing up near Loris. After she and her husband Gary were married and moved to Crusoe, she found a whole new relic-rich environment along the banks 16 | 954 | Spring & Summer 2020
of the Waccamaw River. She also hunts old farms and homes across the area, always with the owners’ permission. “I just love it,” McCumbee said. “I’ll be going along and see that sparkle, and l know I’ve found something good.” Helping her father around the family farm and on other jobs, McCumbee learned to look inside old homes and buildings. “I have a bird’s nest with an egg in it that was walled up in a porch,” she said. “It was old when we found it – it’s probably 70 years old.” She isn’t afraid to delve into places that sometimes daunt other relic hunters. “One time I crawled on my hands and knees, clipping briars, to get to an old trash pile,” she said. “I had to move a big old black snake off the
