Scientists locate the largest gold deposit on the planet

[Ninurta]

Around 100 to 120 years ago, an Indian family came through the town I grew up in, and camped just outside town for a few days. The old grandfather of the family told some visitors to their camp that if he lived there, he would "shoe his horses with gold, there is so much of it here". It sort of makes sense - we are chock full of minerals. First there was the silver, which the Indians mined. Later there was the lead mines at Fort Chisweill, and still later of course the coal mines.  Iron was bloomed on Copper Ridge where I grew up (there is copper up there, too - hence the name), and down at the Laurel Bloomery. There is iron in the ground here where I live now - water from the wells is rusty "sulfur water", and the creek builds up iron oxides along the creek bank every summer when the rains are light enough not to wash it downstream immediately. There is known to be uranium here in some concentration. So gold would not be that far fetched.

I've found what appears to be gold veins in some quartz rocks, but never bothered to have it assayed. So, for all I know, it was just pyrites. I chucked the quartz rocks with the shiny veins into the Clinch River for amusement. Couldn't think of any other use for them, and I didn't want anyone else to stumble across them and spark some kind of gold rush, which would have disturbed the hell out of my peace... something I don't need, either.

When I got my class ring lo, those many years ago, gold was at, I believe, 80 dollars an ounce. I find it hard to believe that now someone is looney enough to give 3400 dollars for an ounce of yellow metal in this supposedly "rational" day and age. You can get brass for a lot less than that, and it's yellow metal, too, so no difference in my mind from gold. Both yellow metal, just one squeezes wallets harder. I can't imagine why anyone would voluntarily pay that much for it.

They say there is one born every minute.

Silver I can understand - at least it's pretty, and shines like moon beams. But gold? That's just another yellow metal. Why the interest in it? I can't think of anything that would cause me to kill a Chinaman quicker than to have one come poking around looking for gold. I'd give him interest in a mine alright - at least the shaft part of a mine. So it's probably for the best that they're sitting on their own mother lode, and not likely to come poking around here in an effort to mess this tranquil place all up.


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