Halito my Friends,
I haven't finished this story yet, but if you will bear with me, I'll post what I had before my trip to Quartzite. I got my pc back yesterday, but after the trip, I was too tired to mess with it. This morning, I went into my documents to draw it out for the finish, and couldn't find it. I was afraid I had lost it during repairs, but a friend told me how to search for it, (in word.) I just found it a few minutes ago and thought I'd go ahead and post it since I've kept you waiting so long. I'll post the final part some time tomorrow. Yikes!! This is not a tease, just my embarassment.
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Golden Balls are still Waiting
After a seemingly lifetime, the date of my discharge finally arrived. Since I had better plans for my minute discharge pay, I decided I would “hitch hike” to Bishop and save on bus fare. At that time I was stationed in Whidbey Island Washington and it was a pretty straight shot down US 395 to Bishop.
So, I set out on the road with a “ditty bag” and the uniform I was wearing. (I liked to tell people I was traveling by air. You know, “Air ya’ll going my way”??) (lol)
All in all, it was an interesting trip. I was up US 395 about a year ago and passed through Reno, NV, believe me, it’s nothing like it was in 1959. As a matter of fact, if it were not for the signs, I wouldn’t have known it was Reno. In 1959, I can only recall 2 casinos. Both of them were on the East side of the hiway.
The person I was riding with then told me that was as far as he was going,
so, I spent about 30 minutes there with my thumb out.
My next ride was with a real “talker”. By the time we’d gone 100 miles, I knew the names (and some personal history,) of his whole linage from his great, great Grandpa on down to his youngest Grandchild. He did tell me a story about his Grandpa(?) that I found intriguing. It seems that his Grandpa found some diamonds near Las Vegas,............ but that’s for another story. (lol)
Anyway, I finally arrived in Bishop early one morning. Since I didn’t want to wake anyone up at 3:00 am, I spent the next 2 or 3 hours sitting on the front steps waiting for lights to come on before I knocked on the door. Man, I’d forgotten how cold the nights could get in the high desert country.
I had been back a couple of weeks before Sarge had the time for us to go look for the old mans’ mine, but finally, early one morning, we were on our way. I’m not sure how much the roads have changed since I left the Bishop area, but US 395 made a left just North of town, but rather than staying on 395, when it turned left, we continued straight North on hiway #6, parallel to the White Mountains.
Back in those days, the first turn off towards the White Mountains was a dirt road into Silver Canyon. Just before the mouth of the canyon, some movie company had built a RR depot along the old narrow gauge RR tracks. And yes, there was silver to be found in the canyon. Of course, all that I ever found there was a low grade copper ore. (lol) But, Charley Stryker hit a nice vein of almost pure silver in 1956 and sold it to a mining company for $180K. The mining co. went in and in about 2 weeks of tunneling, the vein disappeared against a blank wall. They figured that with all of the shifting the earth did thousands of years ago, the vein could continue 20 to 50 ft. in any direction, so they shut down and never recovered their investments.
Anyway, we continued on up hiway 6 for about 2 miles, to where a dirt road went to the right, up towards the Whites. I remember a water trough a couple
hundred yards from the hiway, and right at one end of the trough there was a fair size pool where the water over flowed the end of the old wooden trough.
No, actually, I could only afford to spend about $50 and that was too much on my limited budget. 
Oh and dont go breaking a Hip to get Dimes in the middle of the roads 
