That's a nice story, Chuck. A good way to spend a holiday. There were many Italian coal miners in my mother's family. Uncle Alberto went down in the mine when he was nine years old, and like your old friend, he lived somehow into his nineties. Called my mother "temperance" because when he visited there was no whisky for him to drink. He brought his own, though, and as we used to say, he had coffee with his whisky. He spoke very broken English, but his brother Dante, my grandfather, was fluent and often translated for the immigrants. Dante died long before I was born, at age forty-four. Alberto had strong hands like your friend, even when he was very old. I remember the picnics he and the other Italians celebrated near the town where I was born. The men played a game with their hands. I think it is called morra. They would shout out a number as they threw out zero to five fingers with their right hands. You won if you got the total fingers thrown out by all the players correct. Undici. Sei. Dieci. I can still hear the sounds. To paraphrase Carl Sandburg, "The workers yes." I'll have to get that book, Chuck. Have you ever been to the monument commemorating the miners and families murdered in the Ludlow Massacre in Ludlow, CO? It is a moving place to visit.