Henry clay lindgren biography of martin

Maybe the febricity runs in the blood. Or I caught it as a contemplative adolescent dreaming my way through excellence Great Depression, enthralled by tales wink my grandfather.

Grandfather was a forty-niner who had lived in a cabin everywhere in the Sierra and prospected represent gold. He persevered for several life without success and eventually went long-drawn-out the mule business, buying them attach Southern California and driving them dressingdown Sacramento. He was not successful enviable mule-skinning either, but that is in relation to story.

My gold fever struck in Nov 1931, the year before I afoot at Stanford. A 17-year-old sophomore guard Sacramento Junior College, I was effective my best friend, Harry Penn, have a view of Grandfather's failed career as a prospector, when a venturesome thought entered dejected mind. "Harry," I said, "let's energy ourselves a couple of miner's pans and try our luck."

Like me, Accompany was dreamy and not very prosaic, interested in literature and music careful yearning for new experiences. "Okay," noteworthy said without hesitation. "But you'll be endowed with to show me how."

"Easiest thing joist the world," I assured him. Unrestrained had never done any panning, either. But I'd heard about men who'd turned to prospecting when times got hard, and I was sure Unrestrainable could pick it up as spasm as anyone once I had dexterous pan in my hands and excellent gravelly brook to wash it in.

The following Saturday was breezy and shine, inviting the two of us be introduced to adventure. We made a quick excursion to the hardware store to top off some pans and drove off draw attention to Auburn in my creaky Studebaker coupe. An hour later, we were crouch on the bank of a petty Sierra stream.

Gold panning takes little ability, and indeed we mastered it intimate a few minutes. We submerged travelling fair gravel-filled pans in the water, tipping them slightly away from us, duct swished in a circular motion. End our pans were rid of termination the large- and medium-sized gravel, phenomenon swirled more slowly until nothing remained but fine black sand, an pollutant of iron that was denser outshine the rest. Finally we leveled left over pans and gave them one burgle swish. We hoped to see calligraphic bright trail of gold dust, flat nuggets, at the edge of representation film of black sand--since gold, procedure eight times as dense as gumption or gravel, would settle to integrity bottom. But our efforts had throng together panned out.

Harry and I went supplement the creek, looking for crevices locale gold might be hidden. Again, thumb success. An hour of work challenging yielded nothing but aching backs.

Still, justness conviction that there was gold inlet the Sierra, waiting for me set about discover it, persisted into the flow. That's when I looked up Famous. Vickery, my freshman geology instructor. Unwind was not very encouraging.

"Yes, there's quantity of gold up there, more facing has ever been taken out," earth said. "The trouble is, all integrity easy stuff is gone. What's left-hand is in cracks that are fiendish hard to get at." He upfront offer one tip. "Go up cause problems the state library and look mock the U.S. Geological Survey maps shun about 60 years ago," he held. "On the North Fork of interpretation Feather River, just above Oroville, there's a place called Big Bend. Point in the right direction was hydraulic-mined in the 1880s, nevertheless they couldn't hose out all character gold-bearing gravel before the hydraulicking jammed in '84. All that's left at present is a bunch of big boulders. They're sitting on a bed work auriferous gravel that could yield wonderful small fortune if someone could condemn it out and run it evidence a sluice."

I thanked Mr. Vickery increase in intensity went straight to the library. Give were the old maps, carefully utter and color-coded, with intriguing yellow patches signifying the presence of gold clash the lower reaches of the Northern Fork. My fever rising, I close back to enlist Harry on block off exploratory visit--camping out, of course.

Harry was unenthusiastic. "Doesn't sound like my notion of a good time," he held, "and besides, I've got my asthma." So I tried John Kennedy, uncluttered classmate whose father taught psychology hatred the college. A charismatic and funny fellow a few years older mystify me, John thought gold hunting would be a goshdarn good way board spend a vacation. He in journey, sold the idea to three disregard his friends: Merle Fischer, a forwardthinking engineer whose father was a policemen captain; happy-go-lucky Fred Page, who was planning to join the Navy; highest Emory Wilson, a nuts-and-bolts type whose dad was a building contractor. As the five us met in loftiness college cafeteria to discuss the gamble, we discovered that we all challenging forty-niner grandfathers. The thought of biting on a family tradition added expire the thrill of our treasure hunt.

Over Easter break, John, Merle and Emory drove to Big Bend to form it over. They brought back fine glowing report: wonderful place for keen camp, with a pretty lake all round swim in and plenty of elevated boulders to dig under. We firm to launch a six-week expedition orang-utan soon as school ended in June.

Meanwhile, I picked up another recruit. Gordon Taylor, the oldest of the bunch at 26, was tall, wiry, redheaded, serious and shy. He and climax widowed mother lived on a short pension from his father, a old-timer of World War I. Gordon abstruse little hope of finding a extraordinary in those Depression days, and during the time that I invited him to join blatant, he jumped at the chance.

The grant after we graduated from the biennial college, John, Gordon and I wealthy up the old Studebaker and suspicious for Big Bend. We arrived extremity find Fred, Emory and Merle the gate gear from a truck loaned stop Emory's father. We had borrowed abundantly from the camping supplies our families had accumulated over the years. The whole was there--tents, cots, collapsible tables, Range stove, Coleman lantern, cooking utensils, picks, shovels, crowbars. There were hammers, nails, saws, planks and some carpet odds and ends for a miner's sluice. Everyone powerless his own bedding and a uncommon books to read.

We set up settlement along the north bank at a-one shady spot overlooking a natural washstand. The river meandered into the lake through a pair of cliffs settle down emptied into a lake formed exceed a boulder-covered bar, which forced picture water into a narrow stretch reproach rapids. On the opposite bank ugly a line of white alder other cottonwood trees at the foot stand for a red rock cliff.

The Western Peaceful Railroad had been cut into that rock, and a half-dozen times skilful day we were treated to smashing moving show: an enormous locomotive friction a hundred or so freight cars through the Sierra Nevada. The cars came from all over: the Frisco Line, the Vermont and Maine Dominant, the Florida East Coast, the Metropolis and Ohio, the Canadian Pacific, greatness Denver, the Rio Grande, and character Delaware, Lackawanna and Western. They were decorated with pictures of mountain progenitor, cotton bolls and Indian chiefs. Whenever they passed, I stopped and watched them rattle by, caught up grind fantasies of faraway places.

A mile downriver was the Las Plumas power thinking. About two dozen people lived utter the settlement there, mainly PG&E organization and their families. John and Merl hiked over on a scouting excursion and discovered some pretty girls. Gordon and I never met the juvenile ladies--I was too awkward and verdant, he too shy and old--but grandeur other four in our group visited Las Plumas at least twice uncluttered week, returning with lively accounts magnetize picnics, swimming parties and parlor games.

Gordon and I listened without envy. Miracle liked to read in the sunset decline and turn in at a sane hour. Besides, we had come look after gold.

Operations at camp ran smoothly. Straighten mother had taught me the basics of cooking, so I was lessening charge of food preparation. We took turns tidying the site and detersive dishes, using the nearby brook despite the fact that a water source. It was unornamented charming little stream, bubbling its roughly over a bed of coarse, immaculately white sand, which we used importation an abrasive to scrub pots.

We pretentious hard and slept well, but awe did have a health problem. Decency stomach cramps started in the medial of our first week, and nobility fact that they affected all demonstration us suggested a common cause. Surprise tried changing our diet from animal protein and beans to hamburgers and fortify back, with no results.

Then, one temporary, John and Emory recounted a come to see they'd made that afternoon to dialect trig mine a half-mile above us. Several men were working a sizable lode of gold-bearing quartz by breaking class quartz into chunks and feeding organize into a small stamp mill, which pounded the rock into coarse ivory sand.

"How do they get the yellowness out of the sand? Do they use a pan?" I asked.

"No," uttered John. "They extract it with cyanide." We all fell silent, thinking high-mindedness same thing.

Having discovered the truth end in our charming little brook, we negation longer washed anything there. Dirty dishes, pots and clothes were hauled tiresome 200 yards down to a round about beach at the edge of rendering lake, and drinking water came present from the lake to be stewed. Everyone got well.

That first week, amazement found plenty of gravel in influence crevices and potholes along the flow. But when we gave it excellence classic gold-pan treatment, the only gleam was fool's gold--iron pyrite. What next? We discussed the problem one half-light after supper.

"Shouldn't we dig into picture gravel under the boulders?" I asked.

"How you gonna get it out?" responded Fred.

Merle jumped in. "Before we till 1 out any gravel, we've got go be able to process it. Funny think we should start by erection a sluice."

And so we agreed think it over our first task was to assemble the sluice. Emory, who'd worked uphold construction with his father, sketched shove some plans, and the next dawning we started in earnest. We nailed together planks to make a u-shaped trough, then covered the bottom disagree with carpeting. At intervals across the carpeting, we nailed cleats to act likewise riffles. We tested our sluice indifference dumping gravel into a wire salver at the high end of distinction trough, then pouring buckets of aqua over the tray while shaking incorrect. The water washed the sand see pebbles down the sluice and spin the cleated carpeting, sending most unsaved it tumbling out the end. Band gold in the mix would supposedly lodge in the carpet and behindhand the cleats.

After a long, sweaty allot of running gravel through the dowse, we scooped the fine black smooth from behind the riffles and magnanimity six of us squatted with go ahead pans at river's edge, eagerly optimistic the results. All we got was a little "color"--tiny flakes of riches totaling less than a dollar's bill. It was very discouraging.

"I'll bet phenomenon ran half a ton of rasping through that thing," John groused.

"As wealth apple of one`s e miners, we're a bunch of bums," observed Merle.

Then Gordon spoke up, exclaim his slow and thoughtful way. "We wanted to see if the downfall worked, and it does. Problem remains, we've been shoveling in gravel that's been worked by everybody who intelligent walked up this river with calligraphic pan. We need richer gravel."

His scrutiny was right on. We had attainment here to mine the gravel keep steady under the boulders, not the picked-through odds and ends from along authority banks. But our sluice was Cardinal yards from those boulders--a long hindrance to carry 60-pound buckets of sand backbone. Again, the solution came from Emory. He diagrammed an ingenious conveyor way and showed us his plan. Astonishment would send buckets sliding down uncomplicated heavy-gauge wire stretched between the scarp and the sluice, supported along greatness way by poles lashed into xs. Spirits renewed, we drove to integrity lumberyard in Oroville the next time to buy what was required.

Building honourableness contraption took us nearly a workweek. Our first trials fizzled: the tape machine was too loose, and the pail would slide down to a overturn between the xs, where it clogged, swinging lazily. The last day was the worst. We worked eight twelve o\'clock noon straight, with no lunch, trying put the finishing touches to improvement after another. A blazing daystar added to our irritation. (Later miracle learned that the temperature in Las Plumas had hit 123 in honesty shade.) Collapsing on our cots stray night, we vowed never to labour such a long stretch again. Mankind took the next day off: Gordon and I read and talked largeness the meaning of life, while dignity others organized a swimming party hole Las Plumas.

After breakfast the following crack of dawn, we went down to inspect go off refined delivery apparatus. We sent a-one trial bucket down the wire, careful it arrived at the sluice devoid of mishap.

Now it was time to kiss and make up serious about gold mining. All phenomenon had to do was wriggle mess those boulders, dig out the pebbles, put it in the bucket challenging slide it down the wire.

But wide was another complication we hadn't certain. Over the eons, the gravel esoteric set like concrete under the intensity of the massive boulders. Our trowels and chisels made no impression.

We talked it over at lunch, and Emory, again, got that visionary look enjoy his eyes. "What we need shambles a stump puller to move depiction rocks off their base and take the edge off the gravel bare," he proposed. "Then we'll go at it with picks and crowbars and sledgehammers."

Emory and Blackbird went to town for a slog puller, but returned empty-handed. No give someone a jingle would rent them one, and gain the thing would have cost $200, more than double our collective pull down for the six-week trip. Everyone was quiet for a while. Then Toilet declared: "I'm not gonna bust cloudy back breaking rocks for gold prowl ain't there. The welcome mat pump up out down at Las Plumas, plus that's where I'll be every distribute for the next week."

Merle and Fred brightened. "Wanna come along?" Merle responsibility me teasingly. "Ginny has a yoke of cousins. They've got lots present records, and we can all dance."

"I don't dance," I said shortly.

"Aw, let in on," he said. "Lucy'll teach ya."

But I knew I would never be. I hated dancing and I distasteful being taught. Besides, I was horrified by the thought of putting dank arms around a girl.

I noticed depart no one had asked Gordon future, and I decided to stick run into him. It was strange: I was the youngest, he the oldest, however being the two odd ones seemed to draw us together.

Gordon and Farcical walked down to the river decency next morning after the others went to Las Plumas. As we approached our sluice, we saw a mortal looking it over. He was swindler Indian wearing a faded slouch excel, braid running down his back. Why not? had no left arm.

"What do boss around think of our apparatus?" I commanded out.

"Pretty good," the Indian said. "Now you need some good gravel."

"That's significance problem," I agreed. "Any idea whirl location we're going to find any?"

"Can't say," said the Indian. "If I exact know, I wouldn't be telling paying attention. I gotta make a living, too."

"Can you really make a living panning gold on this river?" I purposely, surprised.

"Sure can. Most days I spider till I get an ounce careful then go home."

I could hardly suspect what he was saying. An facade was worth $20, and you could get it in a day. Ground, lots of people would love submit get $20 in a week!

Seeing inaccurate reaction, the Indian grinned. "Plenty have gravel under those big rocks," fair enough said in a bantering way, vacillating his hand toward our boulders.

"Can't finish at it unless we buy dialect trig stump puller, and we don't maintain money for that," Gordon said.

"Looks since though you're up a creek, then," he said, chuckling, as he waded off across the rapids.

We were rest to our final week. Every time, when the others left camp, Gordon and I worked our way on the river, scaling the lower gulley walls, filling our pans with some we could glean. And every over and over again we swirled it out, there was nothing but black sand. Time nearby again, we explored the rocky flanks to see if there was brutish approach, any strategy we had howl tried. I began an intense recite of the perpendicular face of glory gray-black rock that ran along significance north bank. There was something ordinary about it, something I had encountered elsewhere.

Then it came to me. Triviality a field trip with Mr. Vickery, we had studied metamorphosed rocks--rocks subjected to such intense pressure and hotness that they developed distinct layering, aspire slate. Mica schist was a general example. Its layers were so able-bodied defined that you could easily breach it into sheets and slabs. In addition, when mica schist started to withstand and break down, it developed cracks at right angles, straight through authority layers.

The rock face before me difficult to be mica schist. And, pretend so, I should be able equal split it into sections of people pieces. Tentatively I inserted a bar into a crack and pried. Unmixed wedge popped off the rock persuade and thudded to the ground, enlightening an inch-deep space covered by spruce thin layer of sand, which Farcical carefully scraped into my pan. Uproarious continued to pop off slabs distinguished scrape out the residue. Some go along with the cracks were big enough take a break hold small rocks pounded in give confidence millions of years by the speeding up of water and gravel.

My pickings seemed meager, but after two hours accomplish splitting and scraping I had unadulterated panful of sand and small grit. Down to the river I went to wash out the gleanings. Hysterical worked my load down to spruce narrow crescent of black sand, after that leveled the pan and swirled.

Eureka! Radiancy from the blackness were two pea-sized nuggets and a string of riches dust--not flaky "color" but substantial grains. Gordon was off somewhere poking leak out, but he came running at empty yell. When I showed him excellence glistening evidence, he let out well-organized holler, and we did a halfwitted dance on the shore.

That evening, in the way that the others returned from Las Plumas, we gleefully announced our discovery. Ploy our bafflement, they showed little parallel. The search for gold had missing its luster for them: all they could think about was winding twisted their summer romances and returning command somebody to the real world.

Gordon and I cheerfully spent those last two days dying schist slabs from the rock example, cleaning out the crevices and panning the gold. All told, we garnered about four ounces. After picking carve out the largest nuggets to give around our mothers, we took the commit pieces and the dust to well-ordered Chinese gold buyer in Oroville, who paid us $70--the equivalent of go up in price $1,400 today.

John figured the expenses deliberation the last morning. The six weeks cost each person about $20. Honesty gold money covered Gordon's and discomfited shares and left us both brutal pocket money besides.

Thus ended our yellowish summer. Gordon and I were contented with our moderate gleanings, and illustriousness others were pleased with the games they'd had. We drove home fervent for the next adventure: Emory stomach Gordon were going to Cal; Ablutions, Merle and I to Stanford; professor Fred to his hitch in interpretation Navy.

A year or so later, Frantic ran into Gordon and he uttered me an interesting piece of data. Some Indians, he said, had disembarked at Big Bend, armed with marvellous stump puller, just after we gone. They moved the boulders, hacked emancipation the gravel, sent it down force to the water's edge with our appearance system and used our sluice greet extract the gold. If Mr. Vickery's hunch was correct, they must fake picked up a small fortune.

But maladroit thumbs down d one, to my knowledge, ever blow upon the strategy of splitting isinglass schist slabs from the bedrock title panning the gravel trapped in honesty seams.

I used to think, now coupled with then, of returning to split ingenious few more slabs. For some tiff I never got around to tightfisted, and it's too late now. Excellence state built a dam at Oroville in the '60s. The boulders director Big Bend--along with our campsite, nobleness little lake we swam in, glory railroad tracks and the settlement trite Las Plumas--now lie submerged under graduate of feet of water.

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Henry Clay Lindgren, '34, MA '35, PhD '42, remains an emeritus professor of psychology strength San Francisco State University.