There are a lot of things that cannot be explained.  It does no good to worry about them.  It does even less good to ignore them.   I think we have a responsibility in those cases where the potential for a grand explanation exists, to make something up.

 

At the edge of the forest behind my house is a hiking trail.  The hiking trail was established on what was once a railroad bed upon which the Penn Central Railroad operated for many, many years.  I know that is true, because there are still a few old railroad ties around, and we frequently find old iron spikes and various other  hardware items along the trail, and some old maps still have it designated as a railroad.

 

It must have been a thrilling railroad to ride, as the trail follows Paint Creek, the finest trout fishing stream in Southeast Michigan,  as it winds and switches its way through the wilderness.  The forest, the flowers, and the wild life that are still there today must have been even richer back then.  I often imagine what it was like, and wish I could have been there to experience it.

 

One day soon after we bought the land we now occupy, my kids and I walked out our back door, down the hill, across the bridge over the stream, down a trail, across the marsh, and up the ridge, way in the far reaches of the forest, and found buried in the ground with only edges protruding through the surface, two old narrow gauge railroad cars.  They are positioned oddly, one half way up the ridge, the other on top of the ridge.   These railroad cars are no less than one hundred yards from the former railroad bed.  And if that is not enough, fifty feet to the east, down the ridge, on a little island in the stream, is an old rusty pickup truck frame. 

  

Now, mind you, there is no road anywhere within a mile of the location of that truck frame.  It just lays there, buried at a thirty degree angle with only about half of it above ground.  When we first discovered these unnatural wonders, they were indeed puzzling. My kids wanted to know where they came from.  Why were they there?  Who put them there?

 

Several years earlier I had met an elderly man who was in the real estate business.  He was an interesting fellow named Cody.  He professed to have owned most of the real estate in the area at one time, and knew enough about its history to convince me he was telling the truth.

 

Mr. Cody showed us a piece of land a few miles north of where my domicile now rests.  It was a rough, hilly, heavily forested piece of land with a paved road, or more accurately a paved highway, right down the middle of it.  Mr. Cody explained that this piece of property was the location of a major bootlegging operation back in the prohibition days of the nineteen twenties, and that the highway, the first paved road in the area, was built to get the hooch out of the forest in a hurry.

 

The bootleggers, according to Mr. Cody, hauled their white lightning down the forested highway and then over to the little Paint Creek Railroad Station in what was a tiny little village called Goodison.  Freight trains traveling on my very own Paint Creek Railroad bed would stop at the station and the bootleggers would load the hooch on to cattle cars with cattle in them, covering the whiskey cases with the hay.  From there it was transported to various boomtowns like Flint, Saginaw and Bay City, and marketed.  The station building is still there today, but it has been converted into a cider mill and restaurant. 

 

My kids wanted to know where those railroad cars in our backyard came from. With evidence like that clearly connecting them to the ancient bootlegger, I was compelled to explain.  I told them all about the old white lightning factory and the highway in the forest.  Then I told them the rest of the story.

 

That old bootlegger had been operating for seventeen years when the revenuers finally figured out where he was and proceeding to close in on him.  Revenuers, by the way,  were the government agents charged with seeking out and capturing bootleggers.  By this time he had accumulated a steamer trunk full of gold bullion and he wasn't about to let it fall into the hands of any government agents.

 

So the old bootlegger, who was wily enough in his youth to build a highway in the forest, also built a little railroad spur with a private train.  The train was oiled and fueled, always at the ready, just in case the revenuers showed up.

 

One day they did.  His escape plan went into effect.  He loaded his steamer trunk of gold bullion on to his rickety old pickup truck and headed for his railroad spur.  He raced that old six cylinder clanker down his highway, over the county road and right up to the spot on the railroad where he had hidden his own private little locomotive.

 

In minutes he had transferred the bullion from the truck to the train, stoked the fire in the old boiler, and rolled the locomotive down the spur.  It took him to the switch where it connected to the Paint Creek Railroad and soon he was steaming his way to freedom...or so he thought.

 

Unfortunately, the government agent that was after him was none other than young Elliot Ness.  This was his first assignment before forming the Untouchables.  Elliot spotted the old pickup in the bushes five minutes after the old bootlegger set sail.  So Elliot hopped in the truck and drove it right on to the tracks.

 

He put that old truck in overdrive and caught up to the old bootlegger before he made the first bend.  The bootlegger, not about to be captured, stoked up the boiler and gave her full steam ahead.  Unfortunately for him, you just can't take a steam locomotive at full speed around a bend, or a truck for that matter.

 

That old locomotive, and the old pickup lost the track around that bend and went bouncing and banging through the bush.  When they finally came to a  stop,  Elliot lay face down in the grass looking rather dead.  He wasn't though.  A few hours later he woke up. 

 

The bootlegger was gone.  Elliot walked over to the tracks and proceeded in the direction of the station, about three miles away.  He didn't walk twenty steps,  when over to the side of the tracks under the trestle bridge, one leg and one hand in the water, lying on his back staring wide-eyed into the late afternoon sun, was the old bootlegger, dead as sand.  His other hand was caked with mud, and his fingernails had obviously been bleeding.

 

That was the end of the old bootlegger, but not the end of the story.  Later that day Elliot came back to the site with a group of investigators to inspect the wreckage and locate the steamer trunk full of gold that informants had told the agents about.  The gold was no where to be found.  They returned the next day, but still could not find the gold.  Soon after that incident Elliot was transferred to Chicago, and the case was closed.

 

Could it be that the old bootlegger buried the treasure somewhere near the location of the train wreck?  After all, his fingers were bloody and caked with mud when Elliot discovered him.  He went to elaborate extremes to abscond with that money.  Wouldn't he try to hide it with his last ounce of life?  Probably.  And the gold is probably still buried there, don't you think.  It is, after all, a forest with very few human intruders.

 

Well the kids wanted to know how the railroad cars got there, so I told them.  I told them the whole story.  It explained everything.  And it was all very logical.