Gold in my blood (long) (419 hits)
Category: Quotes & StoriesRating: 1 on 3 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by jeveux... (View user info) at 2005-10-23 07:26:11 EDT
Hey. This isn't funny and it isn't about sex.
If anyone has the time, though, it would be awesome if you could read it and tell me what you think.
If you're looking for a quick laugh this isn't for you.
Serious post number 1: http://www.ubersite.com/m/75290
i hope you enjoy
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Gold in My Blood
The town was born in 1887 with the discovery of gold. Thirty years later its wide streets were lined by grand, stone buildings mixed with corrugated iron and timber homes. It had a post office, a brewery, six pubs, a small cinema and, of course, the pride of everyone in town, the Grand Hotel. The gold was the life blood of the little town and the global market for gold was the heart. It's just too bad they bled the town dry.
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People call it the ghost town now. We moved here in 1894 to help build the Grand Hotel which still stands today. It is one of just twelve buildings left in Kookynie, and usually accounts for half the population at any given moment: It has ten rooms and our town has ten residents. I am the owner of the once famous Grand Hotel and at the end of this season I will pack up the belongings Eliza and I have accumulated over the years and move us away to the townhouse my son has already bought us in Darwin.
I won't ever take tours around the abandoned gold mines or give a history of our little town again. Never again will I describe to a group of city slickers how once upon a time Kookynie was a thriving little mining town of five thousand people. Never again will they look around, startled, as they realise that now all that is left is the hotel, which is also the general store, and the Kookynie Museum with its collection of photographs, memorabilia and antique bottles. There is no post office.
I understand that the economic global machine has done with this little town and I understand that's life; the gold dried up in 1913 and since then the population has dwindled from five thousand to just ten of us, all in our seventies. I understand that my son is right. There is no hospital and there is no doctor. There isn't even anyone young. It was after my brother broke his leg last May that we realised that we had to leave but none of us can bear to leave the memories. Our children were born here, and our parents made their fortunes here digging for gold. The town survived eighty five years without gold but it has been slowly dying ever since.
When I was a young man I could never understand why the blacks didn't just become miners too. I never could see why they would turn up and our doorstep and beg for food. One of them, an older man, used to come by a lot. I still remember his first visit. He was dressed in the traditional clothing, and unlike many of the younger men he didn't seem to be drinking. He came to the front gate and spoke to me (for I was sitting on our veranda).
"White man," he said,
"White man, do you have any food for a black man?"
I took pity on him and invited him to share my ham. My father was still at the Hotel and I knew my mother would not mind. As we ate he told me what had befallen his tribe. Half of them, he said, had become miners. Depressed by their misfortune at the fields, and repeatedly tricked in to spending the little gold they found, they quickly turned to white women for comfort, and then to drink. Now, there were so few young men in his tribe that it effectively disbanded, forcing everyone into the nearby mining towns. He came to Kookynie because he had a cousin here, he said, but could not find him.
We finished our meal in silence and I was amazed that after letting him share my food he still asked for money. I refused him and he thanked me anyway then left to find his cousin. At the time I did not understand why he resented us but now I do. It's the memories. Just as he, at such an old age, could not forget the way of his life, I cannot forget the way of mine. This little town is in my blood. This little town was made of gold. Gold is in my blood.
Like the old black man I have nothing at my destination, "civilisation," my son calls it but family. No friends (for they are all here in Kookynie, and will move elsewhere in spring), no job (what good is an old hotelier in a metropolitan city?) and no home. A house, yes, but a house is not a home. It has no memories, or at least, not mine. I did not build it for my wife and I did not raise children in it. I do not know it as I know my house here, and it offers only the comfort my hotel rooms offer my guests. It is only a place to stay, not a place to live.
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We have been living in Crest Avenue for a year now. There is an RSL down the road and I have many new friends. We see my two teenage granddaughters regularly and they are beautiful. The older one Alyssa, is sixteen and my son has bought her a car. She drives to our place after school on Wednesday and takes us out to do the shopping. After the shopping we always go out for an early dinner and sometimes even see a movie. The movies are so different today. Before the war, when we were young, Kookynie had a cinema. The seats were wooden and hard and there were only four new movies each year but I can remember every single one. Every time a new reel arrived Eliza and I would dress up and go out for a night to see it. Afterwards, we would walk back down the main street to the Grand Hotel to meet my father. In the cold desert night our breath condensed in the air as we walked along linked like two little steam trains in a happy unison. In the desert night sky we could see all the stars and we could taste the freshness of the air. Our romance, the best time of my life was at Kookynie.
A year ago we moved to Darwin and we have turned the house into a home, but our spirits still yearn for our desert town and the Grand Hotel. Its broad veranda was the place of so many moments. Our engagement, our wedding and the christening of our children all took place there and it's a fair bet that the children's conception took place at that hotel as well. We may have made a new home in global but when the gold dried up in Kookynie and when the town started to die I started to die with it. If the life blood of that town was gold, then gold was in my blood too.
User Reviews
Submitted by simple_catalyst (user info) at 2005-10-23 20:58:11 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
fair enough
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2005-10-23 11:50:34 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I thought it was good.
Submitted by moneyshotforyou (user info) at 2005-10-23 08:26:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
WTF I apologize my friend but go with your bad self.