Viewing page 15 of 73

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

and three miles long. Its terraced walls of mineral deposits created another landscape. The train would take the minerals from the ground and turn it into a commodity. He was one of the workers that kept precious metal on the New York Stock Exchange. From this mine in Arizona came the copper to make pennies. I always saw the connection between my grandfather's train and the pennies we spent. It seemed the pennies were already printed with the head of Abraham Lincoln and a date, all in the train car my grandfather engineered. My brothers and sisters played "pitch pennies" against a wall; we counted our pennies and spent pennies. We collected glass Coke bottles for two cents. Five pennies could buy a pack of gun or a candy bar. We were also copper miners.

My grandfather was forbidden to bring home any of the small chunks of copper or turquoise, but sometimes in the bottom of his overall pocket he would have rocks with the blue turquoise. They would be the size of peas and fit in the palm of my hand. The color turquoise is the perfect color to lay against the landscape; it brought life to the desert. Turquoise is blue, cool, and a primary color, contrasted with the red and browns of the rocks. Turquoise is the diamond of the desert. This natural stone next to the red skin of an Apache Indian is a perfect contrast and calls the gods from above to look down. Turquoise belongs in the west. My grandfather's train pulled these rocks from the open-pit mine to the top of the earth.

My grandmother continued to make his lunch, two sandwiches, one butter the other baloney. The butter sandwich was a simple recipe. Two slices of white bread, a

14