Page 26 - June 2020

PERSPECTIVES

Goodbye God, I’m Going to Bodie!

Paul Fanning, DTM

She sat upon her bed in what would soon Bodie was a typical mining town with
be an empty room. Her trunk was packed gunfights, murders, and robbery a daily
carefully by her mother for the long trip. occurrence. One writer said Bodie was “a sea

Tears continued to well up, streaking her of sin, lashed by tempests of lust and passion.”
face as she whispered a soft farewell to the By 1890 it became a ghost town—the gold rush
familiar wallpaper, the window that faced settled, and today it still sits empty, forlorn, and
the nearby park where she had happily inhabited by the ghostly echoes of its former

played three days ago with her friends. residents while the Boot Hill cemetery reflects
More tears splashed down onto the mattress the pathos and vibrancy of the too few years of
void of sheets and comforter. Three long, its existence.
emotionally filled days since her father I have been there, trod the empty streets,

announced that they, as a family, would be visited the buildings that are left, and filed it
moving to that infernal town to take up his all away like other ghost towns I’ve explored—
post with the bank. She reached into her Cripple Creek, Colorado in 1960 and Fort
small bag by her feet and removed deftly the Churchill, Nevada in 1971. Fame, glory, and greed

diary Papa had given her for her birthday are all but a quiet memory in those historic sites
and found the pen and ink bottle. Opening today.
the journal to the empty page, in her best Fellow Toastmasters, we are bidding farewell
handwriting she penned, “March 25, 1881. to our traditional or legacy education program

Goodbye God, I’m going to Bodie.” that served us well for over 90 years. Unlike the
The diary of that young girl from San little girl sitting on her bed, I am not shedding
Francisco exists today in a historical society tears over its demise. That may come as a surprise
collection. The boomtown of Bodie, California, to many of you who know how well I have loved

(a brief, shining star in the famous Gold County the education award system—soon to be four
where in 1880’s money $90-100 million dollars Distinguished Toastmaster Awards, hundreds of
in gold was mined [around $25 billion in 2020 recorded speeches, as well as dozens of individual
dollars]) became her home. certificates for CC, CL advanced leader and

26 ONE COMMUNITY