PIV wewit
BY DAVE SMITH
‘Times Stat wetter
Under a blazing sun he would
have termed “hotter'n hell" and
attended’ by a bigger crowd than he
ever would have tolerated in life,
they laid Seldom Seen Siim to rest
‘Saturday in Ballarat's Boot Hill,
‘Slim, whose real name was Charles
‘Fetge, died of cancer the Saturday
hefore, at 86, in Trona Hospital, 70
miles away from the ghost town of
Ballarat where he was the only
resident for the past 50 years.
‘At high noon. in the Jong-aban-
doned adobe ruins of the general
store, about 250 people—fellow de-
sert rats and gold prospectors,
mostly—gathered to hear the minis-
ter talk about the fellow they'd
known as... well, pretty peculiar.
But his own man.
‘The elena Toner and irreverent
recluse would have been touched,
srhaps—and amused, perhaps—to
Sots things said at the funeral
‘about his stoutly independent life.
‘The Rev, Donald Sweet, of Cum-
berland’ Presbyterian Church in
‘Trona, compared’ Slim to John the
Baptist, because they shared 2 love
of the desert. (But Slim didn't share
the Baptist's love of water. He used
to claim-he hadn't had a bath in 20
years, except when held stand
outdoors, naked, and slosh a pail of
(water on himself.)
And from the 121st Psalm, Rev.
‘Sweet read: "The Lord is thy shade
upon thy right hand. ‘The sun shall
not smite thee by day, nor the moon
by night." (Slim would have winked
at that. Miners call the Panamint
Valley, which neighbors Death’ Val-
ey, *the suburbs of hell," and Slim
‘used to say, "The sun gets so hot the
rocks seem to curl up. It's 120.in the
shade and there ain't no. shade.
‘That's the hell of it.*)
‘But Mr, Sweet also read, "I will lift
‘up mine eyes unto the hills, from
whence cometh my help," and
probably Slim would have gone
along with that. Slim, known as *the
Jast of the one-blanket and burro
ypectors," somehow scrabbled a
eee ee ee
after tts gold strike
it became a ghost town in 1917,
never struck~it rich, but
gen
which was good f
after time took its toll on the |
Tayo County Coroner Bob ‘Tale
effects ineluding his shotgun,
grave.
After the short service, Slim's
friends took him to his grave in ~
Ballarat's Boot Hill—the 28th
in this miners’ cemetery and the. |
first to be dug in half '@ century.
And, since Sim was the last c ]
living in rat, it presumal
eat ba here'thie gata
“Just bury me where’
easy," Slim used to say. e
‘And so they buried one of the last
of a vanishing breed, im the sandin
‘the suburbs of hell.