An Old Pan

I don't keep many mementos in my life.  I have a few photos and stuff that I can store on my computer, but as far as physical mementos, not many.

There is one that I keep.  It is the gold pan that my grandfather used to pan for gold in Colorado.  He used to tell stories of when, right after the depression, that he would spend days and days, panning for gold in the mountain streams and rivers. 

He would work all day, from dusk till dawn, and get enough gold dust and small nuggets to survive for that day.  Very hard work.

Not only that, the pan reminds me that I come from people who knew how to survive.  My grandfather used to work as a handy man, or bartered for food, ran moonshine, or did just about anything during The Depression, to make ends meet.  He was wildly inventive even had a partner with whom they went across the country, setting up a portable roller-skate rink and renting out the old metalic roller skates that used the key to tighten them. 

Eventually, he built houses and owned I think seven of them, rented and sold them off, and was very successful.

These kinds of people, who live in adversity, overcome it in any way they can.  They are the people I admire the most.  Not only survivors but people who thrive.

All these things I think when I look at that old, tarnished pan!