A Pyrite Unburied Treasure

I had a teacher friend named Shultz who was a geologist. Shultz asked me to chaperone a field study that he was doing with 60 of his students. He had forgotten to make eating arrangements. We stopped into a McDonalds where Shultz ordered 120 cheesebugers and 60 orders of fries to go. I took a picture of that moment. Shultz trying to explain the order and the guy at the window, trying to comprehend what he was hearing without freaking out. The guy taking the order had a look on his face that said " I'm supposed to be outta here in 5 minutes and now THIS.

And that's not even the foolish part.

Earlier in the day, Shutlz took us to an area rich in pyrite. Pyrite is fools gold. It's a conglommerate mineral with streaks of gold color. Many a miner had discovered pyrite during the various gold rushes of the mid nineteenth century. These poor guys thought they had connected with a bonanza and drank all the way to the inspector's office only to find out that their claim was no good and useless.

I picked out a couple of chunks. Damn, pyrite was beautiful to look at.

This was around the time that Foolish Pleasure was the winner of the Kentucky Derby and the fans of Foolish Pleasure called themselves Fools in honor of the horse. Everybody was claiming to be the biggest Fool in the group.

Everyone was looking for a way to prove what a fool they were.

I was out drinking one night with a bunch of "fools" when the concept of biggest fool competition came up. I happened to have a big chunk of pyrite in my car. I told the guys about the beautiful mineral and how worthless it was. I'll go out and get it and I'll have an auction, the person who bids the most for it gets the pyrite and whoever owns the worthless pyrite can be clearly described as the biggest fool of the group.

The bidding started at one draft, by the time it was over Leo McCarthy had bought the pyrite for $20. Not only was Leo named top fool but also because of the inebriation behind the purchase, he was known as not only the biggest fool but also a big, drunken fool. I spent the $20 on beer for us all.

For the next five years, the same group got together. Each year, somebody brought back the pyrite. Leo was the first to bring it back. He sold the pyrite to Ken Roberts for $25 dollars. Ken was pleased to have purchased the pyrite. Leo further added to the foolishness of Ken's purchase by remarking "not only did Ken buy a piece of worthless pyrite but he paid $5 more for it than I paid last year. I made a 25% profit on the deal."

This continued for the next three years and the price of the pyrite eventually reached $150. The final purchaser was a guy named Phil Dwyer who had won ten grand in the state lottery earlier that week. We all drank big that night.

Phil said he was gonna keep that rock for the rest of his life just to prove to everybody what a big goddamned fool that he was. I visited Phil a couple of years ago, forty years after the fact. He took me into his office and there was the piece of pyrite. He had told the story many times and people had tried to buy the pyrite from him offering as much as a grand. Phil said he wouldn't sell it for ten grand.

I want to tell ya, looking at that worthless mineral in Phil's opulent office, it looked like it was worth a million.

As for the chunk that I kept, I still have it.

It's priceless which is how much I paid for it in the first place