If you think the times are tough now you should have been around in 1932. Mom and Dad were feeding ten kids with some help from the state of Oregon and various agencies like the Elks Club, the Oregon Dental Aid agency the Portland Police Sunshine Division and teachers at school and friendly neighbors.

We kids all had jobs, piling wood, selling magazines, perfume, apples, and had paper routes.

So when Dad came home one day with $124 he hadn't spent on whiskey I could hardly wait to tell my friends. And when I told them that we were now owners of a gold mine in Bandon, Oregon they held me momentarily in awe.

I did not know that the newfound wealth was somehow connected to a new gold mine we owned.

My friends stopped punching me and when I mentioned our new gold mine was in a lake and there was a cabin with bunks for sleeping I floated on a cloud while talking about nuggets as big as hen's eggs and maybe I might be able to take them with me swimming and fishing.

Dad had some partners, including an engineer who had designed a great big barge. It was floating on the lake. I heard about it at dinnertime.

The engineer title made my head envision a giant among men like the one who steered the freight train on the railroad tracks where we hung out a lot, making dust out of rocks we laid on the track.

And when Dad came home one day and told us that somebody assayed his gold as worth $34 an ounce I raced outside and told my friend Attley Schimmelfinnig and he accused me of making that up.

Dad spent quite bit of time in Bandon so we only saw him maybe every two weeks. He said he was traveling and looking for people who wanted to know about the gold mine. He never came home again with $124, though.

One time he brought home Henry Bruneau, his engineer. He was not wearing a hat like the ones they wear on the train and he smelled like Dad's whiskey.

He and Dad talked about gold mining and how hard it was to get the nozzle in front of their dredge to suck up the mud and how cold it was in the cabin and how there were lots of deer hanging around the lake and also some bears.

Dad also said they had a .22 rifle and that one day when they had all the gold they needed he would bring the rifle home and I could have it.

Then one day his friends brought him home and took him in the house and Mom said he had a broken collarbone because he had slipped on the steps of the cabin.

And then his friends left him and I never saw them again. My little sister and I spent a lot of time at night rubbing his shoulder with alcohol that made him wince but I guess it helped.

Mr. Bruneau, the engineer, never came back again and one day we heard about a huge forest fire in the woods near his lake.

I guess my rifle burned up in the cabin. And maybe the giant dredge, too.

If it had not for that rotten fire we could have been rich.