An old, gold miner who was
alone, destitute and weary, climbed up Mystery Mountain
To him, it appeared that no one had
entered the decrepit log cabin. He realized the missing
doorknob had probably kept intruders out and prevented the cabin from falling
down, at the same time. Had anyone tried to open the door, the entire building would
have collapsed or caved in, because there was not much other than the door
holding it up.The cabin was at least
seventy-five years old. Its old timbers were rotten, the wood eaten away by
insects. The roof was sagging badly and the door was almost popping out of its
hinges.
Maybe gold miners did not need
doorknobs, as they protected their treasure in their own way. Perhaps there was
some unwritten law about doorknobs that gold miners lived by? Virtually
everyone used doorknobs to open and close their doors. Maybe gold miners, with
their hands full of gold nuggets, used a boot to open the door. That would have
sufficed.
Most people knew better than to enter a gold miner’s cabin,
unexpectedly. Perhaps somebody needed the
doorknob worse than the gold miner and walked off with it.
Panning gold in the mountains
was a rather lonely life and thus, gold miners did many things to occupy their
time. Pouring melted gold to make a gold doorknob would have been an art that a
creative, gold miner might have learned. Perhaps the gold miner was a
romantic at heart, and took it to town to give to someone of refinement, or used
it to purchase the food he needed to survive.
In and out of reality, perhaps
his curiosity, the gleam in his eye and the greed in his heart finally made the
old, gold miner stand up and open the door with no doorknob.
No one really knows for sure.
It was his one fatal mistake
though, but then, he was the original gold miner paying the price of
entry as he returned to his own cabin, for the very last time.
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