Without prospects, they’re prospectors (The New Gold Rush)

The Washington Post ^ | August 24, 2009 | Karl Vick

[Cheap_Hessian]

COLUMBIA, Calif. - Maybe it was the nail in Ray's head. Maybe it was the economy. His wife said one as much as the other drove the decision to auction off everything that wouldn't fit in the trailer and leave Vermont for the mother lode.

"Thought we'd try to make a living at it," Kim Lague said, standing in a mining camp that was busier during the Great Depression than it was in the Gold Rush of 1849, and is busy once again.

And so, 18 months after a co-worker's pneumatic hammer drove a 2 1/2 -inch stainless-steel nail into Ray Lague's skull -- "the plunger of the gun brushed my hat and discharged" -- the once-thriving contractor took his place among the prospectors lining the steep banks of the South Fork of the Stanislaus River, 40 miles west of Yosemite National Park. The bearded man helping him drag the mining gear into the water was a jobless logger who lost his home to foreclosure.

Fifty feet downstream, an unemployed concrete-truck driver scoured the river bottom beside a laid-off furniture mover, back to prospecting after a day spent wrestling with the unemployment office.

[lexington minuteman 1775]

OBAMA’s FAULT!

[central_va]

"the plunger of the gun brushed my hat and discharged"

I hate it when that happens.