Ramblings and Ruminations

Prompt: Claim

I was eight years old when I fell for my first marketing ploy.

It wasn't a decoder ring. That came a little later.

No, this was a gold mine in the Klondike. I could qualify for a claim deed to some actual land in the Yukon Territory of Canada known as the Klondike if I filled out a form and added a cereal box top,

I was going to discover gold, and buy my dad a new car.

I knew all about it because of a television show I watched at the time: "Sergeant Preston of the Yukon". I could see that gold was just laying around on the ground waiting to be picked up by sharp-eyed adventurers.

I begged my mother to buy Quaker Oats Puffed Rice because I needed the box top. I meticulously followed the instructions, and filled out the form, then sent the whole thing off by mail. And waited.

And waited.

Eventually, my deed arrived in the mail. It was impressive. It had seals and stamps and lots and lots of fine print. But most important, it transferred land in the Yukon Territory to me, Tom Walborn.

I proudly showed it to my Dad. I didn't get the reaction I expected.

He laughed so hard I thought he was going to choke. Once the whereas and the forthwiths were analyzed and after the latitude and longitude were decoded, I was the proud owner of one square inch of land, minus the mineral rights.

Dad explained that I could keep any nuggets I found on my inch of ground but if I had to dig for it, I had to give it to the Great Klondike Big Inch Land Company. Then he wondered how I was going to get to my land without trespassing on thousands of other square inches.

Well, that was a bit of a letdown but I didn't care. I was a landowner!

My mom turned it into a learning experience. We looked up latitude and longitude and figured out how long it would actually take to get to the Yukon, if my dad drove.

I don't remember what happened to my deed. For a while, it was on the wall of the bedroom I shared with my brothers. Then it went into a box with my newspaper clippings and my Mickey Mouse Club certificate. All of that has now been lost to the ages.

But I got to wondering what happened to my property, so I googled it.

I found out that not one of the millions of deeds were registered so the land was never officially transferred. Probably a good thing, because I would have then been liable for the taxes.

In 1965 the land was repossessed by the local government for back taxes, and sold to a developer. It is now the Dawson City golf course. There is no record of any gold being discovered on the property.