CONCORD - Bill Allman, 80, ignored the subfreezing temperature and the high winds that romped over the bare hilllop pasture, rattling ice-coated reeds like castanets at the lake's edge.
He waded out shin-deep and dipped a shallow, round iron pan to the bottom, scooping up red mud, white rocks and silt. Allman was after gold.
He left Cabarrus County when he was 17 years old, and has been after gold all over Alaska and much of the world for the past 60 years. His home is Alaska, but every winter he leaves for Concord.
"There's gold to be found in every creek in Cabarrus County," he said, Maybe only in tiny flakes, or almost invisible gold dust - occasionally a small nugget for the lucky or persistent - but it's there.
A. L. Tucker, Cabarrus farmer and longtime gold-panning addict, agreed.
"I've found gold all over Cabarrus County," Tucker said, "Out here around Lake Lynn Lodge, down toward Hell's Half Acre (Midland area), near New London, over toward Charlotte.
"But I've found most of mine east of Concord," Tucker said. "I done wore holes in some of my pans..."
Since 1799, when 12-year-old Conrad Reed found a strange yellow rock in Little Meadow Creek - leading to the establishment of the Reed Gold Mine some 12 miles south of Concord - people have been tearing up Cabarrus ground, always looking for more.
Today, with gold prices bouncing between $600 and $800 an ounce, interest has taken off again.
Tucker said that in warm weather he runs. into four or five, even up to a dozen people panning for gold off Cabarrus County's country lanes and in its back woods. "Lotta people are callin' me ever' day, askin' where to get pans
or how to build a sluice box," he said.
"It's easy," he said. "Just get an old fryin' pan and burn the grease out. Get it all burned out or the gold'll just float right out of the pan.
"Then go out in the country, look for streams or old stream beds. What you want is old branches. Couple hundred years old. Some of 'em are dried up. They're hard to find," he said.
But, he confided, they're the most likely spots to discover gold. He advised getting the permission of property owners to pan on their creeks.
"You ain't going to make no money," he said. "My biggest nugget is about the size of your little fingernail. It's just a hobby with me."
Tucker uses a machine that vacuums up the bottoms of streams, where gold, one of the heaviest of metals, might have settled.
In the bitter cold, Bill Allman demonstrated gold panning, reaching into the reddish wet mass with bare hands to break up mud clods and examine the white rocks. "That's quartz rock," he explained. "Means there's gold."
Then he sloshed the dirt and rocks around and around in the pan, pouring off the top water and dirt, carefully keeping the original contents in the pan, then dipping down to get more water, swirling again and pouring off the top.
If there's any any gold, it will sink and be trapped in the bottom of the pan, Allman said. He peered closely at the residue - a layer of fine sand and dark-colored material.
"Now that's black sand. That's iron" - another good sign there's gold around, he said.
He tilted the pan toward the late afternoon sun. Sure enough, there was a golden tint throughout the black sand - gold, but so dust-fine it was irretrievable through panning.
Okay. So you find a nugget. What do you do with it?
"If its Cabarrus gold, don't put it on the market," said A.L. Suther, who once dealt in gold-mining equipment. "Cabarrus gold is a collector's item. A local collector will give you a better price for it than the market price."
However, if you just find ordinary gold and want to sell it, contact Hoover and Strong Co, in Richmond, or Eastern Smelting Co, in Boston, Suther advised,
Gold pans are available at the restored Reed Gold Mine, where gold-panning in large troughs will resume in the spring. Suther said he has a few pans, and more on order.
"I've sold about 150 gold pans in the past year," said Suther. "I've seen fellows go out and make $50 to $600 in an afternoon - but they won't tell you where they've been."
