My grandfather Mitchell hailed coal for a living. He would drive his truck to the mine and get load and deliver it around town to his customers. As best I can remember, he didn’t work every weekday, but never seemed to be in a hurry either.
During the summer months he would drive off, and we kids had no idea where he went. As we got older, we found that he followed a fair circuit. He had a commercial popcorn making machine, and a snow cone machine. The snow cone machine was of his own design, and actually made real snow, not crumbled ice like so many did. I don’t remember what the syrups he used on the snow were but remember that they were delicious. He would load up his truck with his two machines and be gone for a month or two. I remember one year he was in town during the soap box derby our dad took his snow cone machine to it. We kids help to sell the snow cones. They were so popular, that when we ran out of syrup, we continued to sell the cones of snow.
When Grandpa returned from his trip he would unload everything into the garage and workshop. I don’t know where he kept his folding money, but he always had big bags of change. One year while unloading he dropped one of those change bags into the driveway. Change flew everywhere. Our driveway was a stretch of pea gravel. We helped him pick up the change and realized that all of it was not readily visible.
It was at a later date that we discovered there was gold in them thar hills. The three of us would go out and shuffle through the gravel and come up with enough to cover the twelve cents that was needed for each of us to go to the Woodlawn theater and see a movie. I don’t remember how often we did this, but it was more than several.
Oh those childhood memories.
