It was the 1970s and I had just married my first wife and we had had a baby son in 1974. We decided to move to Hilo, Hawaii because before I met my wife she had lived there for several years before I met her in Southern California through a Church we both attended then in Long Beach, California. In fact, when we couldn't get married at SRF in Encinitas for a variety of reasons we decided to get married in Long Beach because they had a way to get married without a blood test if you have been living together which is a California law that goes back to the 1880s I believe. So, since we had already both had a blood test in San Diego County when we wanted to get married at SRF in Encinitas we got married using the 1880s law for people who have been living together instead.
Then that summer we moved to Hilo, Hawaii where my wife used to live and where another friend of my wife's sister had moved. Her name was Joy and she was married and living there in Hilo. So, we first moved there and stayed with our friend and her husband until we got our own house there that we rented. However, the grass was tall (jungle style) around the house we rented and there were huge avocadoes growing above our house as big as footballs and a friend and his wife and daughter from Alaska were visiting us and he was up on the roof rolling avocadoes he was picking for us off the roof to me. The problem with this was I was barefoot being a California Surfer because we often went barefoot or wore thongs (beachwalkers) in California a lot and also it's legal to drive barefoot in California because of how many people who have died there wearing sandals that got caught in the gas pedal and people died or were injured there over the years. So, going barefoot driving is perfectly legal to prevent deaths in California because of this.
To make a long story short I stepped on broken glass that I couldn't see because of the tall grass and needed at least 10 stitches in my right toe. So, if I stood up my blood would all go out of my foot and this was dangerous. So, I had to stop working and mostly sit at a table with my foot up on the table so I didn't bleed to death even after having all these stitches. So, eventually we didn't have enough money to stay any longer in Hawaii so we returned to the U.S. then.
However, here is the gold part of the story.
Meanwhile in the U.S. my father had become a working partner on weekends of a gold mining company that my uncle and my cousin and my father had started. My uncle was a gold bullion trader and when the value of gold (which had been fixed at 32 dollars per ounce since FDR) went from 32 dollars and ounce to 365 dollars an ounce it meant his investments jumped 10 times in value and he needed a tax writeoff to make his life work well.
So, he invested a lot of money starting a gold mining company with his son and my Dad became the head working partner while my cousin and Uncle were the investing partners of this business. So, my Dad wanted to make me a working partner in this business too so I would come home with my wife and do this.
Either while I was gone or after I returned(it's a long time ago because this is 1974 remember) they bought an old mining mill in 29 Palms that other miners had built. It had what they wanted though which was a huge Ball Mill. What a ball mill is is ball bearings about 8 to 12 inches in diameter in something that looks like a giant cement mixer welded in place into a strong cement foundation. The mill spins like a cement mixer and grinds gold ore down from 1 1/2 inches or smaller rocks down into powder which is then mixed with water to run across a shaker table and the shaker table concentrates the ore into black sand which is rich in metals like Gold, and platinum and Silver and Iron and other metals. By doing this you concentrate the part of the ore that you want that also contains gold (if that is the primary thing you are mining for here).
So, when my wife and I returned from Hilo, Hawaii and my foot was finally starting to heal up I became a working partner in this Gold Mine Venture by refurbishing the gold mining mill along with my friend who was an Architect from Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo whose name was John (he has since recently passed away in the San Francisco area).
So, we moved out to the house my father and I had built on Yucca Mesa above Yucca Valley nearer to Landers and Giant Rock Airport which still existed then(the airport) so we could work on refurbishing the Mining mill 5 days a week from Monday through Friday. But, I think sometimes we would take off Monday and Tuesday because we needed to work with my father on Weekends when he got off his job as a union electrician Building the Encina power plant then near Oceanside and Carlsbad. So, then he went out to the desert on the weekends. We also had mining claims in the Virginia Dale Mining district in the region near 29 Palms as well.
One of the funniest things was that I was driving some gold ore back to the mill one day in a dump truck full of gold ore and the shifter came off the floor shifter in a dangerous part of the dirt road I was driving up. So, I had to reach down and make the nubbin on the floor the shifter broke off of without seeing the road to shift because otherwise I would have died and rolled the dump truck down the hill and lost the ore. So, looking back it is funny but then I was really afraid I was going to die.
Another funny story is that we had pieces of ore that were up to 1 foot in diameter and jagged. We bought a Rock Crusher which was an antique from Van Tassel who did the UFO Conventions at Giant Rock Airport (one of which i attended in 1969 where pilots flew in from all over the world to hear Hynek Speak at this convention then in 1969. Anyway, we bought this rock crusher which would have rusted away anywhere else but in the desert where he had it because it was mostly made of solid iron anyway. It was a heavy thing that we lifted into a World war II 4 wheel drive Army surplus Truck that my father had for the mining business and for hauling heavy things like this. We installed this rock crusher and got a huge belt to take the power from a 50 to 100 horsepower electric motor likely running off of 220 Volts I believe for enough power to turn the jaw crusher or rock crusher. Then one day we turned it on and fed big 1 foot rocks into it and got a surprise when rocks 1 1/2 inches to 3 inches in diameter started exploding out of it into the air while we all ran for cover. We solved this problem in the future by putting the switch on a remote cord 50 feet away from the rock crusher so no one died or was injured when we turned the thing on and rocks started exploding out of the jaw crusher or rock crusher (both names are correct in the trade by the way for this device) Then the 1 1/2 inches to 3 inch rocks traveled on a wide belt or chute down into the ball mill where they were mixed with water to create through grinding by the balls in the ball mill fine powder. Then the powder was run across the shaker table which shook the milled ore down into black Sand where all the metals from gold to platinum to silver to iron all would be found.
I guess I'm remembering my Architect Friend and I working there refurbishing the mill together and mining together with my father and sometimes my cousin and uncle as well then in 1975 after my wife and I returned from living in Hilo, Hawaii. What an amazing life I have led!
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