My Dad, a Hole, and a Buried Treasure!

I have been writing and editing a book about my family and my hometown. Once a person sits down and starts writing, it’s amazing what one can remember. In my writing and my memory, I recalled a time ( a very long time ago) when I was in grade school, I went to work with my Dad.

My Father was a carpenter and when we first moved to Cleveland, he would find jobs, building houses. One summer, he took me to work with him. My Dad wore his khaki colored Oshkosh overalls, put on his blue baseball cap with the Cleveland Indian logo, and buckled on his tool belt. I wore my jeans, t-shirt, tennis shoes, and carried his large black lunch box out to our tan Buick. My job was to pick up the nails, stack the wood, and sweep up the sawdust, or be a gofer for whatever my Dad and the other carpenters needed.

At lunch, my Dad and I would sit side by side as we shared salami sandwiches and cookies. Sometimes, he would let me try his coffee; coffee with sugar and a lot of milk. This is pretty much how I like my coffee now.

On one of those job sites, my Dad tried to keep me busy so that I wouldn’t get bored. On this one particular day, my Dad told me that there might be a buried treasure in the back yard of the house that he was working on. He told me that I could use his shovel, and whatever treasure I found, was mine to keep. Eager to see what kind of treasure that I could dig up, I started digging small holes. At first, I found pennies, then nickels, a few dimes and some quarters. I ran up to my Dad and showed him what I had dug up. Then I ran back and started to dig an even bigger hole and eventually, I started to find dollar bills! Each time that I dug up money, I would run to my Dad. Each time, he would tell me to go back and see if I could find more. I’d run back to my hole and dug harder, and made even bigger and wider holes, and I would find more money. I’m sure that by the time I finished, a person could have built a small sized swimming pool in that large hole.

At that time, I didn’t know my treasure was being buried there by my Father. I would find out later that my Dad and the other carpenter buried that money. After work, when we got home, besides being dirty and in need of a bath, I found myself rich and tired.  I ended up not eating dinner, went directly to bed, and fell asleep. And I bet I was dreaming about holes and buried treasures!