Monthly Archives: June 2021

News travels fast

Posted on June 4, 2021 by | Leave a comment

Jack wrote this in August, 2005:

Richard French, the treasure hunter who wrote Four Days From Fort Wingate, used to poke semi-bitter fun at me by saying, “Jack isn’t looking for gold. He’s looking for the Lost Adams Diggings. He could find a dozen glory holes while he’s looking, and if they weren’t the Adams, he’d just walk right on.”

Dick disliked this trait of mine, which he had fairly well nailed. My other partners over the years didn’t care much for it, either. If a site fit the bill as an Adams prospect I’d beat it to death trying to get it to declare itself, whether there was any gold or not. But if it had some gold, but didn’t satisfy any of the other characteristics of the Adams, I didn’t have time (from my point of view) to try to discover how much potential it had.

In those days I could afford the luxury to indulge such snobbery, though it cost me a few friends and prospecting partners.

When Dick French and I were searching together, he was roughly the age I am now, had a bad knee, was generally not in robust health and not in a great financial position. What he was looking for was the treasure hunting equivalent of a jackpot win. He wanted an easier life than he had, and he couldn’t are less whether it came from the Adams, or just some glory hole we located while we were searching for it. He needed a younger, healthier man he could trust who could get into the rough spots and do the heavy lifting to sort out what we found.

Then, if it was good, he wanted to sell the entire claim, lock, stock and banana peel, to some outfit big enough to rip a hole in a mountain and bring out what they’d bought.

Dick and I parted ways early in the 1990s. A difference in viewpoint so fundamental works fine so long as nothing’s found. But the instant anything promising comes into the picture, everything falls apart.

When I completed The Lost Adams Diggings – Myth, Mystery and Madness, things had changed a bit in my life, though I hadn’t paused to examine the implications. I wrote the book about the Adams, which is what I believed, would interest the readers. I told everything I thought I’d learned that might be important to them. I did it against the advice of every treasure-hunter-friend I had.

I didn’t anticipate a lot of fallout from that book. I had no idea I’d suddenly be getting several emails and letters a month from strangers who wanted to tell me where it is, (from studying maps, mostly) wanting me to go climb a mountain, do everything necessary, then take some miniscule percentage. I didn’t anticipate people gleaning from the book the mentions of places where the Adams isn’t, but where there was evidence of some gold.

Here’s one that came today. A follow-up from one last week from a young geologist who wanted to explain to me that the Adams is in a canyon in the Zuni Mountains precisely where I thought it was a decade and a half ago and searched thoroughly:

Hi Jack,

Do you mind telling me were you found gold in the Zuni’s? You mentioned you found some gold somewhere east of Cottonwood Canyon?

Where was this spot if you don’t mind telling me? I don’t plan on panning it, but it would help me establish more possible reference points.

I am working on a comprehensive theory of the Zuni Mtns as a possible location for the Adam’s dig. I  would be glad to share with you the

current status of my theory in the next week or so if you would like to hear it and discuss it. It has been worked out with much work and lots of time in the field.

hope to hear from you and discuss this soon, yours,

Brian

The placer he’s talking about is one I passed over because it wasn’t the Adams. I’ve never gotten back to check it out further, though lately I’ve intended to.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I carry more than my fair share of stupid around with me. I suppose word has gotten around.

Jack

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Selective abhorrence of terrorism

Posted on June 2, 2021 by | 2 comments

Jack wrote this in October, 2006:

I’ve composed this from memory of the events of the time.  Some minor inaccuracies, names of places might be wrong or miss-spelled.  But this is a generally accurate description of an actual event as it happened, including the reaction of the world (Europe and the US) during the aftermath.

Not many years ago, 1987, maybe, the Israeli Defense Forces, moved into Lebanon to intervene in a war between the Christian Phalangists and the Palestine Liberation Front forces.

As they did so, the UN personnel and the PLO combat personnel evacuated by ship, leaving a non-combatant, mostly un-armed population of 1000 Palestinians at the major PLO base at Shatila, Lebanon.

The Israeli forces moved to surround Shatila, but didn’t enter it.  They locked it up so nobody could leave, and brought the Christian Phalangists in to do the dirty work.  For 36 hours they lit the sky with flares while the Christians moved in and slaughtered all 1000, every man, woman and child at Shatila.

A few managed to survive, hiding under the bodies of the dead until the dust settled and the gunfire stopped.  Then the Israeli loudspeakers came on.  “We are only looking for terrorists.  No one else will be harmed.  (words to persuade any unlikely survivors to come out with their hands up).”

No US president ever became outraged by the slaughter, clearly a military action.  Clearly no terrorist act.  No wars on THIS terrorism, because the right people were killed by the right people.

We in the US never liked Palestinians.  They didn’t give up their homes and their land easily enough to suit us when we created the Zionist state of Israel.  When they were shoved off into filthy camps in Gaza and elsewhere, they threw rocks at cops and got their ugly pictures in the papers.

The PLO became a leading force among them, dedicated to trying to get the ancestral homeland back by any method.  They killed Europeans.  Killed some good Americans.  Bastards.  Their leader dressed the way Jesus must have dressed, dressed the way Matthew, Mark Luke and John probably dressed.  Didn’t shave often enough.

Let the Christians slaughter them all they want, was the world reaction.  They ain’t getting their land back.  We gave it away, and we wouldn’t have done it if we didn’t know what was best.

Let the Christians kill them all.

The Lebanese Christian Phalangists did their work at Shatila, but they ran out of steam.  So we had to declare war on terrorists to expand the job.

A holy war with the right people killing the right people.

We’ve got to do it, because they hate us (gotta wonder why), because of the unprovoked 9/11 attack, because, as luck has it, they’re sitting on the oil we need to keep the country running.

And, of course, as everyone knows, they want to destroy us.

There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with racial, ethnic, religious, or patriotic cleansing. Slaughtering, enslaving, and taking the property of people who believe differently from you, who have a different skin color, who speak a different language, so long as they have something you want.

The Jews have done it from their earliest history.

The Muslims have done it since the beginning.

The Christians have done it throughout their own history.

The US could never have become great without a willingness to follow lockstep in that tradition, taking whatever it wanted from anyone who had it, Indians, French, Spaniards, Mexicans, Mormons, and slaughtering them out of pleasure or necessity occasionally.

Nothing intrinsically wrong with that, if you’re a good Jew, Muslim, Christian, good American.

What’s wrong is the hypocrisy. The lies.

Have the decency to be honest about your beliefs, your actions, your bloody history and the bloody future you aspire to.

Jack

 

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