I grew up in a tiny rural community in southwest Texas, barely a blink on the highway halfway to Mexico. The joke was the town was SO small that BOTH city limits signs were attached to the same post. Although it was the 1950’s, our reality was about a generation or so behind that. Before the internet, it took a while for things to reach remote areas.

Like most, Grandpa was a farmer and had a son (my Dad) in the “family business”.

Unlike most, he was also a natural mechanic and had built a going little business repairing tractors and other farming machinery. He ran it year round but it was very busy only about half the year. Dad worked there, too. During planting and harvesting seasons, farming activity is very demanding on the equipment. Something was always breaking. It had to be fixed fast or the crops would ruin.

When parts were ordered from the manufacturer or distributor in the big cities, they were often delivered on the Greyhound bus that passed daily. No FedEx. Shipping might take weeks, so repairs often had to be improvised in order to get a tractor or combine back into the field before then. Limping was better than sitting.

The “garage” was on the highway and had those old style gas pumps out front. I remember “helping” some customers when I was very young. Of course, most were locals — half of whom I was related to — kids were often “put to work” at an early age. I could drive a pickup before I started school; had to stand up to see out but transitioning the clutch is hard when you’re short. No automatic transmissions in trucks back then.

Inside the shop, underneath the cash register counter at the front, there was a boxy black safe that was kept locked most of the time. It was about a yard wide and tall. One day when I was 4–5 years old, Grandpa was working with papers from a drawer in the safe and was called to the back of the shop to help with some repair problem. Seeing an opportunity to explore new territory, I started rummaging around in the safe, just looking. I was a curious kid.

Somehow, I was able to get my little arm behind the open drawer of the safe and found two items that had been jammed behind it at the very back. Grandpa was happy when he saw what I found.

One item was a crumpled stock certificate for 75 shares in the Atascosa Lumber Company, engraved and ornately signed. A rusty paper clip attached a hand-written receipt for several gallons of gasoline. Apparently, my grandfather agreed to hold this for some passing stranger who desperately needed to fill up and promised to return to exchange it for cash. Grandpa trusted people to excess. It was worthless and he gave it to me to play with.

He had been wondering how the other item had disappeared, though. Taken in receipt, it probably put him “out of balance” one day. I’m sure it bothered him, Grandpa had a solid mental grasp on math and numbers. When groups played canasta, he was usually the scorekeeper and wrote the scores on the back of a “weekly specials” ad from the area grocery store; paper was not wasted. I tried to beat him reaching score totals (using pencil and paper) and he’d still win just doing it in his head.

U.S. gold coin

It was a 1925 Indian Head gold coin. The Quarter Eagle is about the size of a dime, has a face value of $2.50, and consists of 1/8 ounce of gold so it has some heft. The coin had been stuck on its edge in the safe at the back of the drawer slide.

I don’t know how the Eagle nomenclature came about… a Double Eagle was the $20 gold piece; an Eagle, $10. This was back when U.S. Silver Certificates, mostly $1 and $5 bills, were also widely circulated.

Anyway, Grandpa kept the coin.

Many years later, my Dad handed me that gold coin. Grandpa gave it to him to pass along to me when I was old enough to appreciate it (and not just spend it… or lose it, like I did that old stock certificate). The coin is worth a few hundred dollars today.

The handful of times I’ve gotten it out to take a look, however, it’s returned thousands of small childhood memories “working” around the shop. Strange snapshots of men working, equipment torn apart, grinding and cutting-torch sparks, engines being rebuilt, dirt, grease.

Tightly linked, yet nothing at all like that shiny gold coin.

Quarter Eagle

Someday, I’ll give it to my son. It will have minimal meaning to him and evoke even fewer memories.

The story fades and the coin continues to pass from hand to hand.