Stephen's blog (www.stephenpearsall.com) was good at summing up our weekend in SLC. But I don't think he gave our new friend "older gentleman" quite enough attention in his blog, so I'm here to fix it. Here's how it went down.
This was the exact picture I was trying to take when I heard a voice behind me. "You find anything good?" Well... I mean yeah. We found a hole in the ground you can see from space, and trucks the size of two-story houses. So I turned around to see the inquirer.
Mid sixties. He was missing one of his two from teeth, and the other one wasn't in such great condition either. His mound of scruffy gray beard, though, distracted his company from his teeth. (I was really hoping nothing lived in there... but the whole time he was talking, I was being attacked by gnats. So this is inconclusive.) His hat was a camo fisherman hat with pins on it. His glasses were big, his pants up high.
Without really waiting for an answer, he continued with "Did you know you could fit the body of every man, woman, and child in this hole, and it still wouldn't be full?" I was so taken aback, I didn't even ask if he meant in the US or the world! (I'm still bummed I didn't ask.) So you can imagine mine and Stephen's shock and silence throughout the rest of the "conversation". His questions to us stopped, and the "facts" started rollin... and rollin... and rollin. See, there are 3 types of people as I see it. 1) takes silence as a hint that the people aren't interested, and shuts up 2) takes silence as awkwardness and talks to fill it, and 3) takes silence as a clue that the other person has nothing to say and probably just wants to hear you talking and will never shut up. Our friend Beardy McNerd is of type #3.
I don't know how true everything he said was (and he said a LOT), but some was pretty interesting. Turns out during his weekly visits to the mine he has made friends with many of the workers, and is apparently up to date on all their policies, court cases, politics, you name it. I think the owner of the mine could have learned something from this guy. He talked a lot about the same issues that we are having on our construction site (like environmental concerts, permits, etc) but I was getting cold and wanted to go home, so I didn't encourage him with my stories.
And then, when he ran out of things about the mine to talk about... well.... he took our "thanks for the info" as an invitation to talk about himself. My favorite thing I learned from Beardy? He plans his vacations based on....
PENNY SMASHING MACHINES.
Apparently, there is a lot to say about these machines, because we listened for another half hour. His last vacation, he left with 6,000 pennies.... and 23 days later, came back with NINETEEN (19). What does he do with them? Oh, just trades them, many machines have several different designs on them, so you have to do it 4 or 5 times. I have this image of an old man trading pennies with a little kids like Pokemon cards or something. (Did you know the mine used to have one of these machines? But it broke, and it's being repaired, and it was supposed to be back 2 months ago, yada yada). And then he told us he has a girlfriend in San Diego. Bless. Her. Heart.
Anyways. I never did learn Beardy's real name. I'm guessing it was Ralph. Our 1 hour visit to the mine was somewhere around 2.5. But you can imagine me and Stephen, just standing there, fighting off gnats while Mr. McNerd just listened to himself talk.
ON a completely different note...
I WENT TO SEATTLE LAST WEEKEND!!! SO GREAT!!! I will blog soon, I have lots of great pictures. And NEXT weekend, my mom, sis, 3 aunts, and grandma are coming to Vegas! I will surely have some exciting posts soon.
XO!
