Gold Mining Was the Allen Family Business

We had good luck in finding Gold. We were skilled at sluising, which was much better than panning. We ended up with the Half-Circle G Ranch which got us through the 1917 Pandemic, since we had our own food and water and no need to go into LA.

Ralph George was a salesman and had a Triumph motorcycle, and captured the heart of Juanita Wheeler who was an Allen by birth and with Scottish ancestors tracing back to Old Scotland.

So Dorothy (mom) and Fenton (uncle) were the kids of Juanita, and they were good with horses, handy with guns and capable of helping on the ranch.

Mom was the Annie Oakley type, and she got several fox farms in Wisconsin, and sold pelts to the big department stores in NYC.

Silver fox was as fluffy as mink and far less costly. So those coats tailored by the big stores did very well on Park Avenue in NYC.

When Dorothy arrived in town she bought 7 Sutton Place, which was right ON the East River. As a child I knew every tugboat by name. They saw me on the beach asking them to honk, and they did honk for me.

Later we lived at 123 East 70th which was in the Rhinelander Zone. I walked past and into the Frick House on 71st and many times, and it was filled with Watteau paintings two storied tall and 90 feet wide.

Frick was a coke man, and provided the best coke to Carnegie. The steel they made was used to build the railroad across USA.

Mom was a flying partner of the Saint, a barnstormer, and their close friendship lasted her whole life. When you fly through barns together, there’s a trust, you see, and it endures.

Mom wore Annie Oakley clothes and rode horses like a true rider. She was a very good shot with a rifle. She joined OSS in 1939 and drove an ambulance in France in WW II. She worked for General Donovan till 1983, and reported as a trusted source to the company office on Washington Square West, down the block from the Jose Greco dance studio.

Her assignments included the White Russians in NYC, the Diamond people at VCA, the UN people, the telephone people, and the oil folks. Her ear for intel was quite alert, and her memory was astounding. So she gave big parties at 123, with the Julliard there to play the music, and I kept the ice bucket full. So I saw her collect the information she was duty bound to get.

She married Jean Duval a Legion of Honor winner in France. He took me everywhere in Europe over the Summers. So I am half French. But I still don’t eat snails. But I like French fries.

Jean taught me to shoot a rifle. He was an expert. He had the best guns and they were accurate at half a mile. We shot out a lot of street lamps in Cannes. When the bulb was not hit, you could hear the impact on the metal lampshade, ping it went.

Rosey was the school of kings and I had several royal kids as my roomates while there. I became a downhill racer, on Wassengrat, Eigli, and Wisspeilen. I had Head, with good bindings, and regular poles. Most of Meieressli’s Marauders had long bamboo poles to do the Mambo in high powder. We had a helicopter to take us to really good high powder.

Madame Jounnanot was a graduate of Ecole Polytechnique, and she taught me chemistry. I had total access to the lab, and her capable instruction. I made lots of chemicals that could explode. Later this skill helped me get assigned as lawyer to a SEAL team. They like my interest in blowing things up. I got them work and kept them out of dutch. They let me tag along as an observer on some training exercises. They were very silent. They knew how to make the jungle free of Huks. They had knives like my MI-6 dagger. They knew I was a staffer for COMUSNAVPHIL, so they stopped with the Benny Hill salutes, and the Budweiser on Hawai’i shirt stuff.

I like mining and metals. Getting the good metals and mixing them into steel to make good alloy material for jets. I feel that when evil needs an enemy, take me, I’ll go, and do the job. Kill the foe.