The adventures of owning an older home

We've lived in our house for 3 years now. I have a love-hate relationship with this house. We don't have air conditioning, but we do have a swamp cooler. It blows so much crud into our house, it's not even funny. I decided last Saturday that Raymond and I would remove the vents and vacuum out the ducts as best we could so we could clear out some of the grime. We had never done that before and I don't know if anyone has ever done it in the 50 years this house has been around. It was sickening. We could hear so much stuff getting sucked into the shop vac we were using. After working in the kids' bedroom, Raymond decided to work in the living room again because he didn't think he got all of the dirt out. He climbs up a step stool and starts cleaning it out with the vacuum hose. Oh wait. There's something up here. Hmmmm, what could it be? This thing is pushed pretty far back into the duct. Well would you look at this, it appears to be a bag of drugs! Seriously. :O I tell him to pick it up with a plastic grocery bag-



It's not the greatest picture, but it was a small, clear bag with white powder stuff inside. Raymond and I were flabbergasted. What do you do if you find drugs in your house? He called his dad to see if we should call the police. His dad said yes, so we did. Soon two officers were at our house and examining the contents of this bag. They said they couldn't be too sure as to what it was but they would take it and send it to the lab. I have no idea if they will ever get back in touch with us to tell us what it was but they said if we ever see anything like this again, either inside our home, outside, or anywhere, really, to please call the police right away. After being in shock for a while, Raymond told a friend about it online and that person googled it and said if it was crystal meth, which is what Raymond thought it was, the street value on a 1 lb bag is about $20k. We had maybe 1/4-1/2 lb. Oh. My. Word.

I told some ladies from church about it and someone mentioned being thankful the owner of said drugs didn't come back for them. Uh, yeah, I really didn't want to allow my thoughts to go there. Yikes!

This is the vent where it was found. The bag was a little open and the powder spilled a tiny bit. Just think, for three years we could have been getting a little high off of that while our cooler was blowing. :/ I'm joking, I think.

My mom made an interesting observation that the particular vent register cover over the living room duct was the only new one in the house. All of the others are originals to the house. Hmmm, I think someone might have wanted easier access.

I hope there is no more! I'm afraid to look!