[Granville-Hough] 22 Jun 2009 - Bunker Hill 2

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2009 06:53:22 -0700
From: Granville W Hough <gwhough at oakapple.net>
Subject: BunkerHill2 - 22 June 2009

Continuing the story of an ancestral neighborhood. GWH.

GOLDEN DAYS AT BUNKER HILL, by Harold Hopkins (used by permission) (Part 1)

It is probably unjust that there are so few shortcuts to quick wealth. 
Too many people spend too much time searching for easy outs - hoping for 
the right card to fall when they would do better sticking to more 
useful, less exciting pursuits. In the 1930Æs my Dad and some of his 
friends believed that finding gold might be, for them, the big payoff. 
In the summer and fall during those lean years they would, now and then, 
traipse off for a night of gold hunting. Night, because the gold they 
sought was not gold dust or nuggets, as found in nature, but gold pieces 
already mined and minted, and artfully concealed. And they wernÆt 
looking for just a couple of gold pieces to clink together, but an iron 
pot, a fruit jar, a length of lead pipe, or even an old sock full of 
golden eagles.
This nocturnal fever grew out of a wishful and wistful thinking and the 
willingness to swallow pure rumor; foolÆs gold, if you like. The tales 
about hidden gold were superficially different, but all had a kind of 
alikeness: Death had come to a certain stingy, crafty, unsociable old 
farmer or merchant, always a bachelor or widower, who distrusted banks 
and kept all his assets in gold pieces. The stories pointedly noted that 
no container full of gold coins had turned up among his personal 
effects. Rumor upon rumor was embroidered so endlessly that red-blooded 
goldbugs could hardly stand the suspense of gold unfound. The teller 
speculated freely about the amount of gold, and where it might now lie. 
It was whispered hoarsely that the late departed had spent much time 
taking solitary walks, and had been seen behind the barn or smokehouse 
or in the corner of an old field. Some listeners became convinced that 
all this gold lay awaiting the turn of a spade by the lucky finder. If 
the miser had no close kin and the house was unoccupied, that was the 
signal for a gold rush on some dark night.
When one is young almost everything is new, and the incredible is 
accepted as the ordinary. At my tender age I had added little or no 
skepticism to my bag of lore, and I admit to believing some of these 
far-fetched tales were true. Later, knowing more of human foibles, I 
came to believe that gold hunting may have been just an alibi Dad used 
to get out of the house for a night of poker û an equally uncertain, and 
slower, way to wealth.
But one day while exploring around the house, as kids do, I came across 
a gadget I had heard my Dad mention as his ômineral rod.ö In those 
pre-electronic days, this formidable looking instrument consisted of 
several pieces of machined brass, all kind of screwed together end to 
end. One section had a loosely coiled spring, with a ôpointerö at one 
end. You walked along with it in your hand and when it detected gold, 
the spring would bend as the senser pointed in the direction where one 
should go to dig. ThereÆs no evidence I know of that such a contraption 
ever led anybody to a cache of gold. But oneÆs head can be filled with 
such nonsense.

(GWH: It was after WW II when mine detectors became commercially 
available that there was a resurgence in hunting for gold or silver by 
both Sullivan descendants and outsiders. Of course, lots of old cans 
were dug up this way, as well as plows and other metallic debris from 
farming operations. When you were exploring around old house sites, you 
could step into pot holes left by careless diggers who did not bother to 
cover them. On the Hough farm, the old Frank Ware homesite was checked 
out thoroughly by his descendants using detectors. For more about pot 
holes, see part 2 of Harold HopkinÆs experiences, June 23.)

P. S. The exchange between Winston Churchill and Lady Astor comes under 
the category of "When Insults had Class." She said, "If you were my 
husband, I'd give you poison," and he said, "If you were my wife, I'd 
drink it."