Aug 22nd, 2008
The Housewife and the Mine Owner
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My friend dafka wrote this a couple of years ago but the story and its lesson have stuck with me. I felt it was worth sharing. Dave grew up on an Indian reservation, when he speaks of “the People” he is talking of the Cheyenne Indians (if I remember right). Nimschi is his grandfather. (The only edits I made were to add some pictures and emphasis) –Doug
I was eight years old when Nimschi told me this story. That would have been in 1958. There was a movie made recently that parallels what Nimschi told me, but I assure you, I heard this story long before the movie was thought of.
A very serious issue had come up at our home. In an effort to be ‘one of the guys’ I had accepted a dare from some older children and stolen some penny candy from the store. As inept a thief as I was, of course I got caught. The fact that the person who dared me into it had forewarned the storekeeper may have helped me get caught, but overall, that is a small matter. The storekeeper was a friend of Nimschi’s, so he didn’t confront me.
He did much worse, he told Nimschi. I had offended in the worst way possible for a child of The People. I had stolen.
In time of war, stealing from the enemy is an acceptable, even encouraged tactic. We were not at war, and the storekeeper was not our enemy. I had done great harm to one of our own. You think perhaps four pieces of penny candy couldn’t harm anyone? The candy was nothing. The violated trust was everything.
Let me repeat that: The violated trust was everything.
By today’s standards, or should I say lack of standards, this is nothing. To The People, this could have been a matter of my banishment or death. You see, the best part of living on the Rez back then was the little understood fact that they didn’t have locks. Nothing was ever locked. Hence, the violated trust WAS everything.
This was to be a very important lesson for me, and Nimschi made sure I understood the Spiritual damage done. He made very sure.
After he was told by the storekeeper what had happened, first that I had been daunted into doing something I knew better than do, and second that the older child had warned him that I was going to do it, Nimschi took me out for a long walk.
He rolled a cigarette as he considered what to say, in his slow methodical way, and watched the afternoon sun setting on the horizon. Then he told me a story about a mining company. There was a mine nearby the rez, so I understood most of what he said.
In those days and times, there was no sick pay, no insurance, and no ‘safety net’ for workers. Mining companies set up little housing ‘projects’, the workers lived there. They had a ‘company store’; the workers got food allotments there. All these ‘services’ were deducted from their pay, of course, which in most cases left little or nothing after the deductions. The houses were mad of stick frame and clapboard, with tarpaper for water proofing. They had punchboard floors. Last, but not least, they had wood heat. Naturally, the Mining Company allotted minimum firewood for the workers, anything more than that, they had to pay for or take Sunday and go cut wood.
This meant that if you broke your leg on the job, or became too ill to work, there were no allotments until you went back to work. A broken leg could mean financial disaster for your family.
The gist of Nimschi’s story went like this: A young miner had an incredibly beautiful young wife and a sickly infant. He fell from a scaffold and broke his leg. The company doctor set the broken leg, which of course, used the last of his remaining allotment. The following Sunday a special collection was taken up at Church Service, and given to the young family to help tide them over. It fell far short of the needs, but it was all that could be done.
The young wife immediately took on doing laundry to help with the finances, and the miner hobbled about on his crutches offering odd job services. More from pity than necessity, the other ‘project’ families gave them the work they needed to barely subsist.
This was all and good until the sickly child took a turn for the worse. The medical bills took nearly every penny the young couple earned. They reduced their diet to potato soup with damned few potatoes, and turnip soup with very little turnip, and stone soup.
Needless to say, after two weeks of that, the husband became ill. The diet lacked the necessary nutrients to keep him healthy while he had bones knitting. He had to be hospitalized at the community hospital. Fortunately, the hospital would provide all the necessary care until he was well, and then accept payments on the debt. Because of his poor diet during the first three weeks of healing and his continual hobbling about to earn money, the bone would have to be broken and reset. He would have to remain in the convalescent ward for 6 weeks.
Her spirit unbroken, the young wife returned home and worked harder, earning enough to get proper care and medicine for the sickly child, and to feed herself a slightly better diet. With perseverance and struggle, the family could survive this terrible crisis.
One does become a millionaire mine owner by ignoring the small happenings and gossip around his mine. The mine owner was aware of the difficulties of the young family, and like all millionaires, had to find a way to turn this to his advantage. Perhaps, he thought, I will give the family two months forbearance on the rent, and a week’s wages at the company store per month until the man is healed. At a glance, that munificent would be cheap at twice the cost! He would earn respect and loyalty from the workers, and then he probably wouldn’t have to raise wages for another two years! Quite pleased with this plan of investing fifty dollars to save ten thousand, the mine owner called for his Lincoln Continental to be brought around, and he instructed the chauffeur to drive him to the home of the young family so he could deliver the good news in person. He knew the political value of such a gesture, and fully intended to exploit it for all the financial gain he could.
However, all his plans fell to nothing when he met the young wife. He had never seen such incredible beauty before. His normally glib tongue stuttered out the ‘new’ Company Policy for workers injured on the job. His composure shattered as he gazed at her lovely Irish face, lightly sprinkled with freckles, topped with a mass of fiery red hair, and accented by shiny sea green eyes.
He could not help but notice her willowy figure, and the way the fabric of her blouse stretched across her firm proud breasts. After stumbling and stammering out his good news, he fled the scene to the safety of his limo and returned to his office. By the time he arrived there, he had determined that he must possess this woman in bed. No other woman would ever take that picture from his mind, nothing else would suffice, no matter what the personal cost; he MUST have that woman to his bed.
The mine owner wasted no time. He went straight to the hospital and told the young husband that he would pay one million dollars for one night with his wife. The young man was furious and ordered the mine owner from the room.
He left, but waited down the hall for visiting hour. When the young wife arrived for visiting, he informed her that he had offered the family one million dollars for one night with her, tipped his hat before she could reply, and walked out.
The young family was understandably insulted, and angry. They began making plans for the wife to find another mine for her husband to work at as soon as he was able to leave the hospital.
One does not become a millionaire mine owner by being impatient. Nor does one become a millionaire mine owner without learning how to manipulate people, using the power of money.
A young nurse’s aide who worked at the hospital never missed an opportunity to mention “The poor sickly child” whenever the wife visited the husband, and how “He could have specialist care if they only had enough money.” The nurse’s aide would wistfully sigh as she commented that she could go to college and become a Registered Nurse, if she could only “find the money.” For that matter, the nurse’s aide mentioned nicer clothes, better lifestyle, dependable cars, and the warmer climate that could be moved to for the child’s health, the child’s educational opportunities and every single benefit of having an unlimited supply of money. Of course, the nurse’s aide was in the pay of the mine owner.
At first, the young couple ignored all such thoughts. They continued to struggle to succeed and overcome this current tragedy.
But the “seed” planted by the vision of exchanging 2 hours of humiliation for the means to eliminate forty to fifty years of abject poverty and hardship had taken root in their minds. And the ‘planted seed” was being well watered by the idle chatter of the nurse’s aide. The discovery that the interest of a million dollars alone was the equivalent of two years mining wages per week astounded the young couple. Just a little ‘tidbit’ casually dropped by the nurse’s aide, of course.
Slowly, subtly, the conversations between the young husband and wife began to take a new direction. Perhaps God would understand their perfidy. Is it possible that this was the means that they could restore the sickly child to health? Would it really be “that bad”? Surely their undying love for each other could survive this “one time insult”!
They rationalized their thinking, they justified their temptation, and oh how they wept in each other’s arms and forgave each other in advance.
Then they finally sent a note to the mine owner, agreeing to his terms.
With hardly a gloat in his avaricious heart, the mine owner sent his limo to the house and took the young wife to a hairdresser, then to a clothing store specializing in scandalous underthings for women, and at last, at the appointed hour, she was delivered to the Hotel.
She was guided to an expensive suite, and within was a note inviting her to refresh herself in the sumptuous bath, and to revel in the expensive makeup and perfumes, and to clothe herself in the deliciously decadent scanties that she had selected earlier.
When the time finally came, the mine owner let himself in with his key, and found the beautiful young wife transformed into a ravishing siren, fit to lure the very Gods of Rome to despair. She smiled nervously, and asked to see the money, to make sure this degradation was worth her honor.
The mine owner placed his briefcase on the bed next to her, and opened it. Within was an envelope containing forty dollars. The young house wife was furious! She grabbed her robe and covered herself primly and demanded; “What do you think I am, some common prostitute?”
The mine owner replied: “We have already established WHAT you are, my dear; we are just haggling over the price now.”
One does not become a millionaire mine owner by keeping faith with verbal agreements.
Nimschi stopped the story and rolled another cigarette, giving me time to think.
“You see, little one,” he continued; “If you are not for sale, no price is enough, but if you are for sale, the fee is irrelevant.”
He began to carefully explain that I had sold my honor to appease the leader of a clique. We did not know the word ‘gangs’ in that area at the time. The leader of such a group was usually a charismatic individual, just like a politician, Nimschi went on, and just as spiritually dishonest as a politician, or a millionaire mine owner.
Then Nimschi told me that I had been ‘informed on’ before I even committed my crime, and by the very instigator at that. I had been used, vilely, for the amusement of the older boys. To make it worse, I had given my permission to be used because I had sold my honor for acceptance into the group.
“Either you are for sale, or you are not . . choose!”, Nimschi demanded of me.
With that, we began the long, silent walk back to the house. When we finally arrived, there was a pair of Nimschi’s old laced logging boots on the porch, painted white, with the word THIEF lettered in red fingernail polish on the toe of each boot.
Until I made amends to the store owner equaling forty cents, ten times the value of the stolen candy, I would wear those boots. I looked for mercy in Nimschi and Grandmother’s eyes on that lamp lit porch that night, and found none.
I told Nimschi that I wasn’t really a thief, I had just taken a foolish dare. I had been stupid, not evil.
He told me; “If the shoe fits, wear it. And not only will you wear it, you will lace it up and be proud of it, until you show me that you want to wear different shoes!”
So it was that I worked in the store for five cents an hour, one hour each day after school for five days, and then three hours on a Saturday to make amends to the store owner.
The store owner told Nimschi that an apology was all that was necessary, and Nimschi replied; “We do not make apologies, they are a sign of weakness, an admission that we are unable to make amends, or an excuse to avoid making amends.”
I made the amends.
THANK YOU, NIMSCHI!!
PS: When I later found out the reason the boots were already prepared for me was that my Uncle Ray had to wear them ten years earlier for a similar offense, so I didn’t feel so absolutely horrid.
©dafka aka Dave Niedermeyer
Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and…
1. Works on I.E. Only: Having a website that works only on Internet Explorer is so 2003. That’s when I.E. had 95% market share. At the time, I thought it was a good thing, since developers had been putting up with AOL’s lousy browser for too long, and Netscape’s last gasp was truly awful. But since then, I.E.’s share of the marketplace has dropped to about 80% (this site’s visitors are about 80% Firefox) — and will probably drop even lower now that Microsoft no longer makes I.E. for the Mac, whose market share is growing. In addition, more PC users are switching to browsers like Firefox and Opera for various reasons (such as speed and protection against malware). Consequently, we developers need to take other browsers into consideration again — particularly if we’re targeting people who are likely Mac users (such as designers and students). Some webmasters have refused to diversify, and are still quoting that 95% figure. Keep up with the trends, comrades! Other webmasters have responded by coding their entire sites in Flash, which is generally browser agnostic, but 
2. Flash Intro Movies: Flash intro animations were cute — once upon a time. But these days, they’re just annoying. You have to sit and wait for them to load, then they’re moderately entertaining at best. It takes a lot of creativity to give a Flash intro animation a “wow” factor anymore. From a development point of view, they’re expensive to create, expensive to edit, and most people I know click that “skip intro” button anyway — particularly when they’re surfing at the office and don’t want all that Flash noise to attract the boss. The only sites that should have Flash intro animations are movie sites, whose purpose (and forte) is entertainment. Want to spice up your site? Put a movie on the homepage — not QuickTime (see next beef) — and 
3. Plug-In Required: I hate having to download a plug-in to use a website. Flash — OK, that’s fairly common, and most experienced surfers will download it early in their web-browsing. (Why Flash doesn’t come pre-installed on all computers is beyond me. Must be an issue with those greedheads over at Adobe.) What bugs me is QuickTime, which is Apple’s video player. If your audience has to download a plug-in before they can watch your movie, it better be a never-before-released scene from 
4. Illegibility: I mentioned hiring a professional designer, but you have to keep an eye on them, too. Many of them see words as a “design element” rather than conveyors of important information. Consequently, you’ll find lots of sites with blocks of text that look spiffy, but are impossible to read: the text is too small — you shouldn’t have to lean into your monitor to read something if you’re younger than 50 — or the color combination is absurd (black text on gray, or white text on yellow). A common color combo these days is white text on black — which is great for short blocks of large text, like headlines. But entire paragraphs of white on black is definite headache material. What’s wrong with black on white? Another beef I have is text that consists of an image, which search engines can’t read, and which requires a designer to update. I know reading is anathema to the digital generation, but let’s give words a fighting chance on our websites.
5. Bad Writing: Sometimes the words might as well be illegible — hence, my suggestion to 
6. No Explanations: Of course, illegibility assumes that there’s text on the homepage to begin with. Lots of websites just assume you know what they are and what they do when you first land on them. Many Web 2.0 sites, such as Plurk.com, ask you to “Sign Up Now” before even telling you what you’re signing up for! These sites bury their explanations in the “About Us” section. Not only is that detour annoying to the prospective user, it also means all that search-engine friendly text is on a sub-page. “About Us” sections should be used for the history of the company and bios of the management — put the company or product description on the homepage! As for repeat users who don’t need the description, use cookies to automatically reroute them to their dedicated pages.
10. Impossible to Find Anything: Inaccurate site maps. Invisible contact info. Insane search engines. Regardless of the size of your site, smart architecture and simple navigation are utterly imperative — particularly since Google could deposit a user somewhere deep inside of it. How will they find their way out? I picture hordes of users wandering the innards of a site like survivors on The Poseidon Adventure, yelling, “Where’s the Contact page? Where’s the Contact page?” And please don’t cheap out on search functions, particularly if your site contains over 20 pages of content. The search engine over at MySpace should be put out of its misery.
