Love During the Time of Corona –6.0 — North Fulton Street, Darwin, East California, USA

“You may be right/I may be crazy/But it just might be a lunatic you’re looking for…”

Geeeeze Louise….SOME people take social media sooooo seriously. One little mention of a mechanical knee and….poof!

Recently (like in the last few hours) I’ve had to relocate my writing/living studio. I know, I know, we are all trying to stay positive in this time of stress. So then, I’m going to put the best face possible on this situation. I moved in with a couple of real famous writers. That’s the way I see it, anyhow.

A lode of silver ore was discovered in the hills behind my new home. It was found and prospected by a medical doctor named Erasmus Darwin French, from Visalia, California. He was looking for the Lost Gunsight Mine also known as The Silver Mountain. The hill behind my house was not it.

This was round about 1860. The next year an enterprising easterner by the name of Moses Poorman (no relation) used his life savings ($134) to begin a stage coach line that cut through Death Valley, up a switchback path through a notch in the Panamints, swung around Mt. Matarango and down toward Darwin Falls. It ended up at French’s Mining Claim. Years later the place would be called Darwin.

Poorman soon went broke but not before, in early November of 1861, he had the pleasure of transporting two budding western journalists out to what they erroneously thought was The Silver Mountain. The two journalists were escaping an American epidemic and bloodbath that would soon be named The War Between the States and then later: The Civil War. The journalists were Brete Harte and Samuel Clemens.

Clemens’ older brother, Orion Clemens had been appointed Secretary (governor) of the Territory of Nevada by the then Republican President Abraham Lincoln. But Nevada bored Sam Clemens. So he lit out for the silver and gold fields of California. Brete Harte, whose father was a founding member of the New York Stock Exchange, came to northern California in the 1850’s. He met Sam Clemens in a gold mining town called Angel’s Camp. They got drunk (and sick) over a bottle of Yukon Jack. But, of course, that’s a whole other story told later by Jack London.

Okay, enough name dropping. My friends in Darwin say it’s okay for me to stay the rest of my quarantine in the second oldest building in town. Locally they call it the “writer’s retreat”. This is (supposedly) where Clemens and Harte spent the night on their trip to The Silver Mountain (which they completely mis-identified).

It’s a cool place, dug into a hillside. A bit dusted with time travel. The roof is slightly stoved in. The door creaks on its hinges. The glass in the window has “flowed” into distorting ripples. There is a wardrobe in one corner that holds a couple of Confederate Army uniforms, but no skeletons. There is a big croaking frog named Jim who sounds like he just swallowed a quarter pound of gunshot and keeps me up at night and a diamondback rattler who speaks English with a heavy French accent. (“Misssssieur, eet is soooo goud to seeeee uuuuu”)

Sure, I’m going a little stir crazy in forced solitude. My imagination is running away with me. But honestly, there’s GOT to be a good story here somewhere……