Brandy and Barney’s

We completed our project in New Mexico and returned to Gates and Fox’s home office in Loomis, Ca. Myself and Mike Janzeski worked in the yard and went out on short jobs where Kirk Fox was sampling for gold. We sampled several old mines and gold mining claims. In November we mobilized our skid mounted core drill on some property several miles out of Washington, California. Washington was founded in 1849 by gold miners working the south fork of the Yuba River. The town sits in a deep canyon at 3700 feet elevation near the river. Washington is a jump off point for a huge area of national forests in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. We drove national forest dirt roads to within a couple miles of the drill site. From the dirt road we had a rough dozer trail for access. We had an old D-6 Cat for getting supplies in and out. If we didn’t need the dozer we walked to our drill.

I kept a pint of ginger brandy in the glove box of our pick-up truck. We would take one good sip coming off work after ten hours in the winter weather. The pick-up had been on the job in Silver City with us. Mike lived on the outskirts of Sacramento and I lived in Yuba City. We met at Denny’s restaurant in Grass Valley at 5:30 for breakfast before heading for Washington. One morning the Highway Patrol pulled me over right at Denny’s entrance. He stopped me to check my registration because the rear New Mexico license plated was in bad shape. The stickers were faded and it was dented and damaged. When the highway patrolman asked for my registration it was under the open brandy bottle. I tried to act nonchalant while getting the registration out without him seeing the brandy. He asked me if I had a gun in the glove box. Of course not. When I explained the brandy and why it was there he asked for the bottle.He said he would forget it if I poured out the brandy and threw the bottle in the back of the truck. I hated seeing my brandy cutting a trail through the ice and snow. He gave me my registration and said, “It’s time for both of us to get some breakfast”.

A few weeks later I stopped for gas at a station near home at around 4:30 in the morning. A sheriff coasted in close to my pick-up and looked me over real well. He asked me where I lived, where I worked, who owned the truck, and could I prove it all. Come to find out my sheriff dispatcher neighbor called my truck in as stolen. When leaving in the morning I turned my pick-up around and drove out of the neighborhood slowly with my parking lights on. I turned on my headlights at the first street. No use waking everyone up. My neighbor saw the truck go by without headlights, and just like Barney Fife, reported me as a thief in my own truck.

Mike got a kick out of my brandy in the ditch………the sheriff got a kick out my stealing my own truck.

Gary Goes To Jail

Gary lived in Great Falls and was my helper on the drill in Hughesville. We were drilling a 3000 foot vertical hole in a remote site. We put the drill and enough supplies to complete the hole on site before freezing ground in the fall. When the hole was complete the drill couldn’t be removed until the ground was firm after the spring thaw. We used a snowmobile all winter for access to the drill for two shifts of drilling each day. Our water was pumped from a creek half a mile away. We had to haul the full core boxes to the road each shift. Under ideal snow conditions the snowmobile worked fine. If the weather turned warm or we got heavy warm snows we spent more time pulling and pushing the snowmobile than we did riding the damn thing. By the time we finished the hole none of us wanted anything to do with snowmobiles.

We were on night shift during a June snowstorm. The drill was surrounded by pine trees and the lights didn’t carry far from the drill. We knew it was snowing and nothing alarmed us. It was a warm storm. Gary went to fuel the water pump about midnight with the snowmobile. When he returned an hour later he was wore out. The snowmobile didn’t like the new wet snow at all. He had a hard time getting back to the drill. The snow was nearly up to the bumper on his four wheel drive pick-up and the wind was blowing in the open spaces. We were six miles in the boondocks. We shut things down and headed for the house. The six miles took us four hours of jamming forward, backing up, and busting forward again. Luckily Gary had lots of gas. We were very happy to see the main highway. The ride was much more exhausting than drilling.

Another night we had mechanical problems with the drill and shut down early. We stopped at Johnson’s bar in Monarch. Gary was riding with me while repairing his pick-up. He used our station wagon to get from Belt to Great Falls while working on his truck. It was Friday night and Gary left with friends. I gave him the station wagon key so he could take it home. About two hours later I went home. Linda met me at the door all excited. Somebody had stolen the station wagon from in front of the house. She had called the sheriff. She wasn’t amused when I laughed and explained it was Gary. If Gary made it home it was all right. The sheriff would have called if they stopped him. We called the sheriff the next morning to cancel the theft report. Sure enough Gary went to a convenience store in Great Falls on Sunday afternoon. When he came out he was looking down the barrels of sheriffs deputies pistols. Gary was locked up and interrogated for several hours before they realized the theft had been cancelled. Linda still wasn’t amused when I laughed about Gary getting nailed.

Gary wasn’t amused when they hauled him away……..and never borrowed the station wagon again.