Washington, DC, 2001.
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Columbia, Calif.,
Jan. 22, 1941
Howdy Alan
Well I guess the new car fever has wore down just a little bit but it aint run into the New York fever yet, and I feel pretty sure that it wont. Come through about 16 new states on the way out here. Drawed a purty big horse shoe curve on the U.S. road map as you will notice if you draw a line from New York down through Georgia, Alabama, Miss., La., Tex., New Mex., Ariz., Nevada, and on over into northern Calif. This is a good country with a real history to back it uOp. Some feller found a train load of loose gold right out here south of the house a few hundred feet. He must of let the word get out because in just a few days the population took a jump up to 6000 and then right away to about 16000. Had 42 banks here in town at one time and they weighed out more than 180,000,000 dollars worth of gold. It must of been a good town. It took 42 banks to bust it. They got a Wells Fargo Express office just acrost the street here. They got the old set of scales thatthey outweighed the miners with. Everything around here is a antique. Even the young girls are old. Dogs around here caint bark a lick till they get up around 40. I asked an old hard rock miner how long he'd been around here and he pointed out acrost the mountains to some great high pine trees andhe said Do you see them there trees over yonder,? And I told him I did and he said, Well boy when I hit town here, them pines was just a purty fair sized weed patch. They got three old Fire engines here that's been around the horn and they can throw a stream of water 75 foot. Some of these placer miners has been around the bar and they can throw a string of bull further than that. You got to pump the fire engines but not the prospectors. I like this country fine. I been out chopping hard oak timber and liked to of worked the tail off of me. Then went out today on a prospecting round and my cousin slid into the Stanislaus
river off from a mossy rock. The water is from melted snow and coldern old Billy Hell. We clumb a straight up mountain and I got hung up on a clift and I couldn't get up and I couldn't get down and I couldn't get sideways and I was just hung up there between what you might call a rock and hard place. I still dont know how the hell I got down. Managed for this portable in El Paso for ten dollars off of one of Mary's brothers. It's a good one. I usually get to him for something or other. This out of doors living is what I like. This is a high and dry altitude but it's been a raining right here lately. At one time or other they took a high pressure water hose in here and washed all of the rocks down to get the loose gold out. And for miles andmiles up and down the country here you can trace the washout and the big granite boulders and see which a way they went. The best I got it figured they went back towards NewYork City with the gold and out towards Frisco with the water hose. I'm a reading my aunts bible and my cousins book on How & Where to Find Gold and if I dont find the gold well the bible dont speak so dam good of the stuff nohow. This home cooked grub around here is what gets me. Usually after a hard day of thrashing around over these here rocks you come in and you got a big pot of pinto beans and a pan of good rough corn bread and a bowl of butter and a big onion and a good hot cup of black coffee and I will state that as I looked all over the eastern seaboard for a pan of cornbread worth calling cornbread, I have located the real unsweetened, Heaven Intended Cornbread out here made under the super directions of my oldest father's sister and she dont put no sugar in it and ruin it and gum it all up and this may be the mainest thing that will keep me away from New York inasmuch as you dont have to ring no chimes in a cussed
cafeteria or play no slot machinesin them Automatic Cafes befor you can get a bite to eat. I won everything up there except something I liked and never remeber of getting a knife that would cut the meat. As far as music goes around here I am enjoying the shortage of it. I dont mean that like it sounds. I mean I am glad to be where you dont hear one of the jute boxes a going full blast through every window. They got a little dance hall across the street. They got a bnad of some kind in there that aint no good. A tramp musician is almost a welcomed guest out here. The saloons in some of the mining towns around here are fixed up with nickel boxes but I've walkedinto them and asked the boss man how about knocking off a few tunes to pick up a stake and seen him turn the nickel box face to the wall and tell me to do the best I could. This is the mother lode country of the 49 rush. It's full of mines of all sorts and sizes and