On Sat, 21 Mar 2009 10:06:25 -0700 (PDT), Frogwatch
wrote:


I never found out how James and Doris were going to personally profit
from the “gold in them thar hills� but Bob’s church did buy the Bethel
AME property on Attapulgus Creek. Bob dropped out of the church and
joined another. Later, he did buy an Aerostar airplane but it
promptly developed engine problems and he had to sell the beautiful
yellow Stearman to have enough to fix them. I no longer do any work
with Bob; when he bought 6 Chinese assault rifles and 2 PALLETS of
ammo I decided he’d gone too far.

Good gold story. Here's mine.
In 1972 I spent a couple days up in the Three Sisters in Oregon with a
buddy panning and sluicing for gold. He had the ideas for this, and
had built a sluice from 2x4's, plywood, and old carpet. Had 1/2" x
1/2" "riffles" nailed through the carpet every 18" or so.
"That's what catches the gold," he told me. The entire thing was 8'
long and a couple feet wide. Don't know anything about sluices except
what I found out from the prospecting trip, so I can't get "technical"
about them. I just followed his lead on this gold stuff.
We tied the sluice to the top of my '64 VW Bug to get it up there.
We scrambled down into many ravines where water was flowing, dragging
the sluice and a shovel and pans with us.
Dug up a lot of sand and rock to wash down the sluice, and never saw
any gold in the sluice. Did get a little gold panning. Maybe enough
to coat the head of straight pin, if it was put on real thin.
But it was fun being in the "great outdoors," sleeping under the
stars, and worrying about bears. Ed kept the shovel by his bedroll
and I had a nice rock. Don't think they had pepper spray then.
The first night some rustling sounds woke me up, and I got ready with
my rock, but the sounds stopped and I fell asleep again.
In the morning I saw that a bag of dogfood we brought to feed for
Ed's little dog had a hole munched through a corner, and I showed it
to Ed, telling him how lucky we were to be visited by a bear that was
satisfied with just a bit of dog food.
After 2 nights, we had enough, and were pretty sore from scrambling
and digging for gold for 2 days.
We tied the sluice back on the Bug and headed back to Portland.
Next morning I pop the lid to check the oil.
The sun floods into the engine compartment and the reflection of it by
the gold in there almost knocked me down.
There's gold dust all over, stuck to the sheen of oil on the tin.
It had fallen out of the sluice carpeting and into the vent on the
engine door.
I removed the oil bath air-cleaner and tipped it to move the oil.
The bottom was covered in gold.
Of course there wasn't enough to recover and sell, but plenty enough
to understand what "gold fever" is.
We had no idea what ravine we had dug that gold up in.
Maybe it came from more than one.
The only thing I can say I learned from this is to not carpet your
sluice. Or bring a carpet beater along.

--Vic