Monday, July 25, 2011

Mount Rushmore

     Me and Lena have seen the Big Giant Stone Heads a couple of times over the years. First time was on dirt roads. That tan colored stuff got into everything. Had to rebuild the carburetor when we got home. Second time was with the grandkids. Sure had changed a lot. Half the people we ran into didn't speak English. And let me tell you there was a crowd.
     You seen the picture of the place? Yup, that's about what it looks like. Might be better if you just stumbled on it, "Well I'll be damned. Will ya look at that?"
     But all that's just an excuse for lettin' me fill you in on one of the best kept secrets in the country. It all goes back to 1923 when the idea for carving some kind of massive, great American monolith in the Black Hills was spawned. In the search for a man to do the job, a brief look turned up Gutzon Borglum. Couldn't have been too hard. He was about the only one listed in the Yellow Pages under Carvings, Big-Assed. And Borglum was looking for work at the time. He'd had a tiff down in Georgia about how to do Stone Mountain and had stomped out. Seems the Rebs didn't like the idea of immortalizing Scarlett O'Hara because she hadn't been written about yet.
     So he heads on up to South Dakota. Has a palaver with a couple of guys named Doane Robinson and Senator Peter Norbeck about what to carve and where to carve it. They be shootin' for some tall rickety rocks called the Needles. Borglum goes and takes a look-see. Don't see much that he likes. The statues would have to be way too skinny and he ain't into skinny. But now he's got the bug. Says he'll do it if he can chop him out some Presidents. Throws out the names of Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln. The Dakota boys give their okay. Borglum now knows what he's lookin' for. Just needs to get his hands into some government pockets.
     In 1924 he finds that through the help of Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Teddy's daughter. She had a lot of pull up there on Capital Hill, Alice did. Some called her The Other Washington Monument. You can look that up if you don't believe me. And it turns out she's not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Particularly if that gift horse is made of gold. Old Borglum, he ain't been sittin' on his thumbs all winter. Been workin' his kiester off lookin' for what we now call a win-win. He not only wants to become 'nobody ain't never gonna forget me' famous. But has a hankerin' to live out the American Dream.
     And that's where Mount Rushmore comes in. Tell you the truth, this is where it gets all chicken and egg for me. Don't really know what came first, whether he found out the mount was just right for carving. Or that there was this big ol' vein of gold running through it. So big and so obvious, no one could see it but him. Oh yeah, he was hot to start a drillin' and a blastin'. But was lacking the say-so to start.
     Turned out he knew people who knew people who knew Mrs. Longworth. Gets himself an introduction. Talks patriotism, art, monuments. Doesn't get but a yawn. Then talks gold. An eyebrow raises. He pulls out the assay report. She finally agrees to twenty percent and.... "Gotta get Daddy up there or no deal Mr. Borglum!" Borglum agrees but insists Teddy gets put in the back. Hush-hush from there on.
     1925. The deal passes through Congress. Over the next sixteen years 24.7 million in American green backs cracks off and slips out of the site under the cover of darkness. Kicker is that millions more sits about where Teddy's collar bone woulda sat had not Borglum passed away in March of '41.
     Today the Park Service knows all about the gold but no way they can desecrate an American icon. And they ain't talkin'.