The Lump of Gold

The Lump of Gold

I'll get right into this. It involves a recent trip to the house in Carnegie, Pennsylvania where my grandfather and descendants  lived from about 1908, up until the 1950s. It also involves a personal "moral dilemma" as I considered  revealing some family lore, to the current residents of the house. Would I be doing a "good thing?" or would I set into motion events which would cause "bad things to happen?"  

Carnegie began as a steel town. It was named after Andrew  Carnegie, of course, the 19th century steel magnate, and was ringed with mills carrying evocative names such as Union Electric, Universal Cyclops and Superior Steel. My grandfather and several generations of relatives worked in those mills. My grandfather died before I was born, but my father related a number of stories to me about the man and this is one which he told me on a number of occasions. It seems, one of the jobs my grandfather did, involved working on a small furnace which smelted gold. With the right chemicals, a load of gold bearing ore would be heated, separated into impurities which would be removed, and pure gold, would flow out into ingot molds, producing slabs of the precious metal. At regular intervals, the furnace had to be "cleaned out." Small bits of pure gold collected in the seams of fire brick used to line the furnace and my grandfather had to take the bricks out, scrape off the gold bits into a collection vat, and put the bricks back into the furnace.

These little bits, he scraped off were "worth their weight in gold" literally- so there were strict security measures involved all through the process, and workers were routinely searched as they left the gold smelting area. But my grandfather had found, accidentally, that during the cleaning process, he collected very small flecks of gold in his pant cuffs! This revelation led to, what we might call, "deliberate accidents" where, at each cleaning, tiny bits of gold made their way into his cuffs. When he got home, these flecks were collected, and over the years, he began to accumulate a small "lump of gold."

When my father told me this story, he would always hold out both hands in a cupping gesture, when he described the appearance of the mass, indicating that it took both of his father's hands to hold the glittering ball. How much would a lump of gold, probably at least five pounds in weight be worth today? At current prices, it is about $128,000... So what happened to the lump of gold?

According to my father, guilt began to weigh on his father's conscience. The lump of gold was like a glowing reminder of human fallibility. He had stolen the gold, there was no getting around it. What could he do- sell it and start living lavishly? Everyone in the small town would know that he had done something wrong to acquire the wealth.  Should he return it to the mill and say "here, I stole this?"  There may not have been an easy option.

My father told me that the lump of gold eventually went "missing." The family story was that grand pa, had taken the lump and buried it in a deep hole in the back yard of the house, laying it to rest and ridding himself of what he considered a disgraceful moral lapse. But on the other hand, it was still where he could get to it if his family ever REALLY needed it...But no one really knew, and at the age of 56 my grandfather died without ever telling anyone what he did with the gold.

It was with this bit of family lore in my mind, that in June of 2011, I was visiting Carnegie for a few days. On Sunday, I decided to attend services at the church where I had been baptized over 60 years ago. It was the church my father and grandfather had attended.  It was the church where I was warned that breaking any of the Ten Commandments meant being plunged into a lake of fire in hell after death!  The God I was taught, didn't fool around!  You didn't "die" from the molten torment, you were already dead- so you just suffered! Now, as I sat in the church, a baby was baptized, children sang,  creeds were recited, and I knew every word,  and we all embraced each other in fellowship after the service.  I also thought of the story of the lump of gold.

I decided to walk up to the ancestral house, a few blocks away, and see what it looked like today. The house is on one of those incredibly steep yellow brick streets, where millworkers homes were stacked on small terraced lots carved into the coal laden hills which surround the town.  I found the street. (I won't use the name, because I don't want to set off a "gold rush" of blog reading "prospectors" with metal detectors prowling back yards in the middle of the night.) I wasn't quite sure of the house at first, because the wooden houses were now mostly covered in siding or asbestos shingles.

But my touchstone was a single house, which once belonged to my aunt "Emmy." I knew it was directly across the street from my grandfather's house. I recognized it because she was an avid gardener, and nurtured fruit trees as well. My aunt died many years ago, but her fruit trees are still there, and they were blooming that June morning! I then recognized what had to be my grandfather's house across the street.

I wondered...should I knock on the door, and tell the occupants the  story of the gold?

What harm could it do? I thought...so I climbed the steep concrete stairs to the porch. It was littered with car parts. Carburetors,  brake pads, hubcaps, bits of fenders and such were all over in a random manner. The salvaged car parts flowed into a small side yard as well. I guessed that a serious mechanic lived within. There were "Steelers" stickers and flags festooning the windows, and empty six packs of beer stacked against a railing. The house door was open, but a screen door was shut. I pressed a door bell button, but it had been painted over many times and didn't budge. So I knocked on the aluminum door making a rattling sound. I could hear a radio. No one answered. I tried again. No answer...

I thought, maybe they are in back, so I looked down the very narrow passage between the house and the neighbor's house. There was a gate, which I didn't want to cross, so I yelled "is anybody home?" There was no response. I tried the other side,  still no response. I decided to go for a little walk and try again a bit later. But as I walked, I thought again... "what harm could it do?" 

There was a car, idling in the street at the end of the block. A man stood beside it and was shouting up at a house- very angry, then got in the car, slammed the door and drove off, screeching away. "What harm could it do?"   I began to play the gold story forward in my mind. What I imagined, was me telling the story to a charming family. They rent a metal detector, discover  five pounds of gold in their back yard! Perhaps the husband uses the money to invest in "the car repair shop he'd always dreamed of owning!" Who knows?

But suppose they don't find anything. Suppose they are not charming, but bitter and rancorous? Suppose they become angry with me, with each other- the husband/ boyfriend etc. doesn't want to search, the woman does, they fight...who knows where THAT leads? They dig up their yard, rent back hoes, strike their water line or something and have thousands in expenses, all because I told them this story! Or suppose they find the gold and then the sudden wealth destroys their relationship.  My imagination was going wild as positive and negative scenarios played out. The angry shouting man had put a negative spin on my thinking, but I still had the positive scenario to consider. "What good could it do?"

I decided, maybe I was MEANT to be on their doorstep that June morning one way or the other! I decided I would give it one more try, and let "fate" decide  events. I went back and climbed the stairs. I could still hear the radio. I rapped on the door again. I heard movement, someone clearly moving around inside. But no one came to the door. I yelled in, and knocked again. More movement, but no one came to the door.

I knocked, but no one answered...I told myself, "this is what is SUPPOSED to happen." I turned and walked down the cracked and sagging concrete steps away from the house where my father had seen a lump of gold which took two hands to hold. I walked past the apple trees which my aunt had planted so long ago, and past the church where a baby had been baptized that fine June morning. I felt "okay" with what had happened. I wondered at how life is a series of forking roads, and how we travel along, going one way or the other, and how we do, or do not,  intersect with the lives of others.