Spinoza in Pennsylvania

Spinoza in Pennsylvania
Fiction
Edward W Pritchard


My Grandpa and Father had lived only 12 miles apart but never visited and couldn't agree on anything. I was very fond of both but couldn't reconcile them so one lived in one town and one in the other and they never visited or talked. When I was 24 years old Grandpa passed away and left me both towns, MidPointe and Deadhorse Pennsylvania.

Deadhorse had been a mining town, a boom town of renown for being nearly inapproachable for it was on a hill of slag, nearly impossible to get to, where boots, men and horses went to die. Of course easy money draws men trying to overcome the impossible and thousands of men from as far away as Europe and Russia came in the late 1870's to mine several rare specimens of rock that were at the time valuable. Then the mine had ran out and it was now population 0 with the death of grandpa its last and only citizen.

Mid-pointe was about 10 or more miles away from Deadhorse and had good water and was where the roads ended and during the boom. Midpointe had even had a railway spur. It was impassible with 19th century technology to build a road past Midpointe; so it became a wealthy little town because the miners by agreement kept their wives in Mid-Pointe and the other women in their lives in Deadhorse. MidPointe although a small town, and because of the mining wealth, acquired all the trapping of civilization in a hurry, several Banks, two or three dry good stores, a music hall for high brow music and fine restaurants and other such places. After the mine dried up and the market for the minerals it produced crashed in the 1890's both towns died as quickly as they had grown.

My Grandpa had bought both towns in the 1930's in the Great Depression for back taxes. The towns were both long since abandoned and everyone then considered oil Pennsylvania's legacy and hidden future asset so no speculators had been interested in the towns and Grandpa got them very cheap and under-valued. Grandpa had lost a lot of money himself in the 1929 market crash and never recovered financially so he moved his family to Midpointe and began to mine again small time in Deadhorse.
Eventually in the 1940's and 1950's the suburbs of Pittsburgh grew so large that a few nature lovers began to move to far out MidPointe and Grandpa leased land and acquired some of his lost fortune back.
That's about when my Dad was born and when he was a teenager he never forgave his Father for keeping his family in such a place, for until the 1960's there was no running water, electricity, proper schools or even civil authority.

About a week after Grandpa's funeral my Mom and I went to Grandpa's house in Deadhorse and it was interesting to look at all the old furniture and antiques with her. Grandpa had always liked my Mom very much and I let her take a lot of old stuff to our house in MidPointe that she thought was interesting. Of course my Dad probably won't like it because A. he didn't like to be reminded of Grandpa, and B. Our house like most homes in American already has two of everything in it anyway. The interesting thing that I discovered but Mom already knew was that in Grandpa's office there was about 200 old mining stock certificates in frames upon the walls.

Mom said, that Grandpa had told her [ she brought him Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner over a lot years] and one year when he was kinda lonely he had showed the old mining certificates to her and told how miners dreams had been shattered by the demise of the value of these shares over the years. Apparently the mining shares were usually a scam and because of excessive overhead and legalese the equity stockholders in the mines always lost everything eventually. Grandpa had a standing offer to buy any certificate over the years as a collectible for $ 5.00 or $10.00 and it often was the last thing a broke miner sold before moving on. Later, I found out from Dad that each certificate was now worth $500 to $1000 minimum to collectors so I had a considerable sum of money in those picture frames, but my Mom had showed me something about the stock certificates that made them more valuable than money to me.

Grandpa had always made his living polishing the minerals that the miners took out of the ground. It was an art to clean and shine the mineral, and then manufacturer it to a higher state before it was shipped to create additional value. Grandpa had been one of the best at the arcane task, that required a surgeon's hands and must be done with a magnification tool that looked like a pair of miniature binoculars on an extended pair of opera glasses. Apparently the Dutch lens makers in Europe a couple hundred years ago had discovered and first made the device that when worn on the face would allow a mineral polisher to magnify his vision many times and still keep his hands free for cutting and polishing. It was tedious but lucrative work and few could do it for long. Grandpa had been able to do it right up to the end it seems.

Mom showed me how Grandpa he had used the magnification device to write on the stock certificates and record the stories and experience of each miner who sold him each individual stock certificate. If the miner who was selling the mining certificate would tell him his experiences or an interesting story or anecdote he had heard over the years, then Grandpa would write and develop it into a story, in extreme miniature on the back of the stock certificate. There was a legal requirement in Pa in those days, for each mining certificate to have a space for special notary notes, about 3 inches by three inches, so the rendering parties could record unusual circumstances to avoid future legal misunderstandings. Of course in reality none of these certificates, that were at that time worthless mining share, were ever tendered so the space was always blank and Grandpa partly as a hobby and maybe to appease the reluctant seller of the worthless pieces of paper began to write stories on the back of each certificate. To write in the small space Grandpa had to miniaturize each word using the "opera glasses" and a very fine mechanical pencil. It was a similar technique to the working of the mineral that he did day in and day out and the only real difference was changing cutting and polishing tools for a pencil.

So I had about two hundred stock certificates, each that had a special story from a miner in the 19th century as told to and enhanced by my Grandfather hanging on the wall of the house I had just inherited. There were additionally, I found out later 5 more stories that My Grandpa had given to my Dad and my Dad kept in the top of his closet at home. Mom said that although Dad wouldn't admit it, he treasured those stories highly that his Father had developed and had kept a few of the best over the years for himself.

After I had given Mom the furniture, that first day and driven Mom home on my 4x4 Honda all terrain vehicle, I went back to Grandpa's house put on the "opera glasses" and took down a few of the stock mining certificates.I began to read the stories by candle light; because it was getting dark and grandpa would never pay the fee to have electricity brought to the house.

The First story on a mining certificate for a company called Alpha Minerals was titled " The Plot Device " by Edward W Pritchard and squinting through the special glasses I began to read---

end part 1