[AT] OT -- Fort Knox & gold

[Larry D Goss]

I had a long discussion with Rolla today about life at the gold respository 
at Fort Knox.  He was one of better than 20 stackers who were working there 
back in the 1930's.  I asked him specifically about the French gold.  He 
said that was the only country that did not use the purest gold they could 
get. Theirs was alloyed and never had a better purity than 87%.  He thinks 
it was alloyed with cadmium, and it was not only a definite pink color, but 
it also was much harder than the US and British gold.  It had a ring to it 
when you plunked it down in a stack and if you didn't watch it, it would 
bounce.  All the other gold was malleable and the bars would friction-bond 
together when being stacked.  The stackers got used to stacking the pure 
gold (which didn't bounce) and flying gold bricks in the French gold caused 
a number of injuries among the stackers.  He says only he and Bill Harrison 
got through with stacking French gold without getting broken legs, crushed 
hands, or cracked ribs.  Rolla and Bill were both tall slim kids at that 
time and they got the job of stacking when the gold got close to the 
ceiling.  He moved $26 million in just over 9 months time.  At that time, 
that would have been 26 tons of gold.  Rolla said Bill sang dirty songs the 
whole time they were working.  He bought them from a peddler who came 
through Elizabethtown by the name of Chief Cody.  Apparently some of Chief 
Cody's best "sellers" were dirty songs and French postcards.

Rolla said his main job was to maintain the three bullion scales at the 
vault.  Each beam scale had pans on either side that were about two feet in 
diameter and the fulcrum for the scale was about seven feet off the floor. 
When the scales started showing sensitivity problems, it was Rolla's job to 
lap both the knife edge and the flat steel plate it rested on back into 
perfectly smooth condition once again.  The steel plate was about seven 
inches square and the knife edge was the same length.  The scales had to be 
lapped (polished absolutely smooth and flat) once again about every three 
months.

Now I understand why Rolla  expressed absolute shock when I complained to 
him a week ago that a local jeweler said it was impossible to polish out an 
engraving that we needed removed so that corrected information could be put 
in its place.  The jeweler said he couldn't do it because it was stainless 
steel instead of silver.  Rolla had lots of experience at polishing out the 
grooves in the Fort Knox scales caused by the weight of the gold and poises 
on the scales.

The man amazes me sometimes.

Larry