It's 9AM
There’s gold in them there hills, I told her.
She just looked at me.
I thought you said it was lithium?
I sighed.
Sometimes, references are lost on those who don’t know the same context.
Maybe you’ve been there before.
My round about way there was a Looney Tunes reference to an 1849 phenomenon on the California gold rush.
And trying to apply it to what’s about to happen in lower Arkansas.
There are two projects going in that are close to ten billion bucks, brining in thousands of construction jobs, and thousands of more opportunities to support those jobs over the next seven years.
At a time when some folks like to go on tv and wring their hands about “labor shortages.”
But a big bad lithium mine fifteen miles from the nearest town sits on the edge of the TX border and just north of PB in another tiny little town, they’re supposed to build an almost 4 Billion gas to liquid refinery.
Both touted as roads to the future for poor Arkansans.
Both make me wonder and feel like we’re on the verge of The Hunger Games type districts, where this Natural State is naturally known for manual labor and minimum wage workers.
Which is why I think about the gold rush, and not the thousands of men who rushed into California or Alaska or the Canadian Yukon to stake their claim and claim their fortune.
Nope, I think about the hundreds of guys who raced ahead of the crowd and set up shops to sell shovels and pans and tents and saloons.
Or the one guy who paid off Congress to put in his exclusive rail line.
And I think about the odds of that opportunity paying off.
I don’t know that I would have bet on South Arkansas becoming a big lithium producer, and if they tally up the costs of converting everybody to EV vs Combustion, it might go belly up before it gets started.
Except…
When the first cars started on the streets of New York in 1910, everybody considered them rich men’s novelties. Something for playing in on weekends.
But almost everybody still used horse, and buggy and carriage and all the industries that supported that.
There were companies built and thriving in the manure removal business.
Because horses poop and someone has to clean it up.
But by 1920, almost all the horses and buggy’s and carriages were gone and entire industries upheaved.
A way of life gone in a decade.
People still rode horses.
People still do ride horses.
Not on the streets, and more like a novelty now.
A decade to change the way people think and view and feel.
And creating a new way of life as they did it.
With the world awhirl the way it feels right now, I wonder if we are on a precipice of another industry altering event.
Or several.
And does AR have a role in it?
It seems like the answer is yes, with two big announcements about fuel and raw material mining.
But like seeing a hero we need, but may not deserve, I wonder at the cost.
Maybe the change will be like books.
From scratched printed on dead trees to electronic versions we carry in our pocket.
It took a rough decade for it to become commonplace and common practice and now entire industries have sprung up around it.
Ebooks.
That gold rush is over, but now we’re on the edge of another one.
Maybe.
When I worked in corporate, we talked about pioneers.
People who went in first to blaze the trail.
A lot of them got shot with arrows.
Lots of misfortune.
Yet the ones who did succeed showed the way for others and more and now, here we are.
I just wonder where to look in the past for a roadmap for this kind of opportunity.
Where do I look for a path through the boom rush that hasn’t happened yet?
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Books by Curtis Long
Fish Williams, PI Series
CUBA LIBRE – a Fish Williams Mystery
MOJITO – a Fish Williams Mystery
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Obstacle Corpse – a classic mystery
The Gumbo Files – The Danny Gumbo Mystery Series