(06-24-2020, 01:40 AM)Lumenari Wrote: ...So when the time was right I settled down in western Montana.
A quiet place with not a lot of people...
My yarn from my Virginia City visit.
On one of our visits, we went to Wyoming and Montana.
There's a couple of places optimistically called 'cities' and they are far-removed from what we had expected.
Virginia City in Montana is a small town that still hold Main street buildings from by-gone years, wooden-sided stores and boardwalks
that creak underfoot. It became an Historical Landmark and in my view, it's quaintness warrants more investment.
In it's past, a number of guys wandered down a nearby creek that hides in thick bushes and trees. The town wasn't there then and
these hard-weathered chaps just happened to stumble across the largest deposit of gold in North America!
Oh they devised plans to not reveal their discovery, but as history as always shown, someone always talks and when exchanging the
nuggets for cash, someone is going to ask themselves 'where are they getting the gold from?' Mining Camps grew up overnight and
then 'companies' formed and claims were filed. The site became a place where those who enjoyed fewer lawful restrictions moved on
and the companies took over.
When we visited, The Mining Company had closed the mine because of the current price of gold... they wait and now it's a place one
can go and take the tour around the site. Just as a factoid, they removed today's equivalent of $40,000,000,000 of the yellow metal.
A steam locomotive and a two-horse carriage takes you through the thin alder trees and undergrowth to a place where Eldorado
supposedly hides.
Nevada City is just up the road and it's one of the oddest places I have seen. It's an accumulation of buildings from the days of the
'Wild West' and when we arrived, I must admit I fell in love with the place. On that day, it was raining... let's be honest, I'm a Brit and
so you always take the weather with you!
It was early morning and as we paid a couple of bucks to a dreary-eyed youngster in a kiosk, I panned my gaze around the soaked
-wooden structures that sat morosely across from a steam train with an unlit-boiler and a solitary road. We wandered from leaning
building to shadowy construction and it seemed if any ghosts still remained, then that rainy weekday was their time to put-up their
spectral heels and cool their pioneering jets.
But I was enjoying the walk, Blacksmith's quarters offered aromas of tired leather and long-forgotten toil. A School House gave the
visitor hope that even out in the wildest of prairies, the children would be given the tools to thrive in a country that was still growing
up.
Glass cases contained dust-husked bodies of long-dead animals that may have prowled the surrounds of the once-thriving town and
collections of musty-smelling knick-knacks sat on desks, ornaments that once proudly adorned rickety tables of the small houses.
Time is the killer... isn't that what they say?
We entered a gloomy Saloon that held no Barkeep or spirited piano player, the drizzle was keeping most of the tourists away and
being a workday, I reckoned that had a bearing too. An old woman sat there playing solitaire on a gnarled wooden table and with
a kind weary smile.
Looking up from her focus of putting the red seven on the black eight, she asked us where we were from.
We chatted and she was informative of the collection of buildings, but on that grey day in August, I could tell you she would have
preferred to be somewhere else.
"Do you know how to tell gold from the fake stuff?" she asked suddenly and our smiles waned as I realised the mood in the room
had changed. I shrugged and looked to my wife for assurance, this seemed a little awkward. The white-haired woman held a wrinkled
hand up and showed with her kind face that nothing was wrong.
"When in the business of running a saloon, yer' gotta know what's real and what isn't" she said with a slight wink. Those pale-blue eyes
alighted on the third finger of wife's left hand and with a slight gesture, she asked "may I?"
The smart-one of my family weighed up the situation and then with a narrow gaze that warned of cunning and a rage that I have only
seen once, she passed her wedding ring over to the seated lady.
She did something... she touched the metalled surface of the lantern on the table and then drew the ring across the coarse fabric of her
ankle-length dress. Making a 'hmmm' sound, she contemplated the circular piece of metal in her lined-hand, we watched with held breath.
The prairie rain watched the incident through the spider-webbed window.
"It's gold, honey..." she murmured "...it's good gold" and passed it back to my wife's eager clutches. Smiles cracked again and after giving
a decent piece of time, we nodded our leave and stepped away from that dingy building. I would have traded her there-and then, my family
would have somersaulted for the visitors and even in the roughest of storms that roll north, I would of gladly fixed the shingles of the old
habitats and smiled in the deluge and laughed at the thunder.
A smile of someone happy.
The strange thing was that as we trotted back to the car, some newly-arrived tourists were handing their money over to the teenager
in the windowed-booth.
"We're open, but none of the performers are here yet" he informed the large couple with colourful baseball hats on their heads.
Well, maybe the old gal had come in early to miss the rain... yeah, that must be it.
Edith Head Gives Good Wardrobe.