No Whining Tools of the Trade

    This exterior wall is hung with mining mementos. There are picks, shovels,axes, some wrapped with gauze, injured from too much use. There are scythes, traps for animals, lanterns, hammers, levels and long thick nails used to secure railroad ties upon which cars carried ore away from deep mines. In the eighteen hundreds, young tough men prowled these streets. Daily, they went underground into tunnels secured by hand cut timbers, never certain they would come out alive. They ate bad food on metal plates that doubled as gold mining pans in the river that tumbles through town and into the valley below.   In the winter, snow was up to their waists and bitter cold seeped through cracks in log houses that had been stuffed with newspapers and torn shirts to keep Old Man Winter from sneaking in. Iron stoves, vented through the roof, got so hot they looked like meteors. The sign on the wall says ” No Sniveling. ‘ If something can be done, do it. If you can’t do it, find someone who can. The pioneer spirit, in America, in 2019, is fighting for it’s life.