When I was in my teens, my father, who is something of an inventor, was working on a process for taking salt out of water. This process required the element, mercury, and, my father being a man of considerable foresight, could see that the demand for mercury would skyrocket once his invention took off. He therefore decided that it would be a wise idea to acquire some mercury holdings.
The best prospects for mercury seemed, at least to him, to lie in the big bend where mercury had been mined until it became uneconomical to do so in the twenties.
So, my brother, my father, and I piled ourselves into an old jeep and made our way South to Alpine, Texas where we checked into a fleabag motel.
Then we went out prospecting. We climbed over rocks and down canyons looking for the red rock that might be mercury ore. We tried to mark the locations of our finds on a map and chipped off bits for later analysis in a home-made device that my father invented for the purpose.
We visited a couple of ghost towns. The more populous of these was Terlingua, which, then, in its pre-chili-cookoff days, had a population of two. One of the inhabitants ran the general store. We spent a good long time drinking Dr. Pepper and talking-or should I say, listening-to this old guy. We never did find any mercury, but I guess that's OK, since the invention still hasn't taken off, and even if it had, the mercury mines would probably have ruined the chili cookoff.
When my son was in his teens, my father and John Ivy, a friend of his at work, figured out a way of combining old accounts of Maximilian's gold with modern satellite imaging technology and thereby pinpoint the exact location of the treasure, or at least narrow it's location down to a few possibilities.
So my father, John Ivy, my son, I, and a couple of other guys piled ourselves into a pickup and made our way West to Crane, Texas, where we checked into a fleabag motel. Then we went out looking for gold. We first checked out Castle Gap, a good bet according to the satellite images. But our metal detectors detected nothing, and we came away with only an excellent view of the vast and empty acres that had once made up my grandfather's and great grandfather's holdings in the area.
We next explored the West bank of the Pecos at Horsehead crossing, where the Butterfield Stage once crossed the river and where my grandfather's and great grandfather's cattle stopped for water. As was the case at Castle Gap, the metal detectors were silent, and about all we got for our troubles was an acquaintance with a few whiteface that had been banished to that godforsaken place.
We weren't too disappointed, however. Even if we had found the gold we would have had to give it up to the State of Texas. And besides, we got to shoot a rattlesnake.