Lou’s View

By Lou Bernard

Ah, kids. They have such great little imaginations. Right now, my son is pretending to fish in the kitchen. He has his little toy fishing rod, and he keeps catching his puppy. This is entertaining to him. Let’s face it: Kids are weird.
Every now and again, you get long-lasting proof of just how imaginative kids can be. For example, recently I stumbled on an article from the newspapers in 1959. I was looking for something else, and I found a piece headlined,”Prospectors, Age 4, Search For ‘Lost Renovo Gold Mine’.”

It happened on March 4, 1959. Two little Renovo boys, Johnny Tarantella and Johnny Winkleman, decided that there was a gold mine in Renovo somewhere, and set out to find it. They were both four years old, and according to the article, they didn’t really bother to mention this quest to anyone, but there doesn’t seem to have been much of an outcry. Again, it was 1959; safety wasn’t really invented until the late 1970s.

Both boys lived on 15th Street, next door to one another. This proximity is of course how they became friends, and how they came up with the idea of this gold mine.

The interesting thing here is that there may actually be lost treasure in the Renovo area. There are many stories of unfound silver mines, buried pirate treasure, and lost gold, all with varying degrees of credibility. I have made a persuasive case that a Philadelphia inventor discovered lost silver in Leidy Township (if you’ve missed that column, I’ll recap for you sometime.) So it’s uncertain whether the boys overheard discussion of this stuff, or simply made it up entirely. They weren’t real clear on it, and it’s possible nobody thought to ask them.

“Their three-hour search last Wednesday took them through town, across the overhead bridge, and into other likely places where the gold mine might be,” said the article. Again, when my son was four, if he walked into the kitchen by himself, I’d drop everything and check to see what he was doing.

After three hours, the boys were covered in mud, as boys have a tendency to be. They also decided they had gotten pretty hungry; their preparations hadn’t included any food supplies. They were on Eighth Street when they were discovered by Winkleman’s uncle, Andrew Mazzulla of Erie Avenue. Mazzulla claimed to have been looking for the gold, as well, though I’d make a guess that if Eighth Street was the site of an old mine, someone would have noticed by now.

They didn’t find the gold mine, but did find some food. At Mazzulla’s place. He took them to his home and fed them, then called their families to let everyone know they were okay. A photo of the boys made the front page, sitting and eating their meal. They were referred to as “Forty-Niners” in the article, though considering their age, “Fourers” might have been more accurate.

They boys claimed to know exactly where the gold mine was. But, not being idiots, they weren’t about to share that information with the front page of the local newspaper. They had plans to go out again and finish tracking it down sometime, which probably caused the families to keep a closer eye on them for the next couple of weeks. The families were briefly described as “worried,” though, again, there is no indication that anyone really got too hysterical about this, or reached the point of actually going out and looking for the kids.

They never did find thelost gold mine, as far as I can tell. I didn’t find any follow-up articles about further searches, and I figure I’d have heard if some kids got rich digging on a Renovo street. So, presumably, the gold is still out there.

Hey, maybe I’ll go look for it myself. I’ll take my son, and we’ll scour Renovo for an old mine. He’d like that, when we have a chance. Right now I’m going to go to the kitchen, and see if he’s still fishing for the puppy. It’s been too quiet in there.