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.