Joe Coal became a miner when he was 18 years old. His father and his mother had health problems and neither could work. So, Joe skipped college and helped his parents. He got up at 5 in the morning to work in the mine until 8 at night. He bought groceries and other supplies to help his parents pay the cost of living. However, his father when Joe was 21 and his mother when he was 23. He continued to work in the mine to support himself.

One day ten years later, he went to the city of Decatur, AL to buy supplies for himself. As he was getting out of his truck, he saw a young woman who had dropped his purchases on the sidewalk. Joe walked over to her and helped her collect her purchases. After all the bags were in his car, he introduced himself, though his face still had black marks from digging in the mines. She told him that her name was “Kim” and that she had a 5-year-old girl sitting in the back.

“Her name is ‘Annie’.” Kim told Joe. Joe thought the girl was adorable and polite. Joe and Kim talked about going out for coffee the next day with Annie in tow.

A week later, Joe and Kim were still dating. It wasn’t until a year later that they talked about getting married, but they decided to wait. Although Joe and Kim were attracted to each other, their backgrounds were markedly different. While Joe had endured a hard life working in the mines, Kim’s parents were wealthy, but she didn’t like her cocky attitude. Kim didn’t look or act like she was a diva nor did she live like a snob. She worked as an independent professional jeweler, who liked to work with precious metals and rare gems. She and Joe talked about metals and gems, since Joe made a living mining for coal and occasionally found gems and metals.

The wedding couple decided not to rush into marriage like many people do. They worked on their relationship and were in no hurry to get married.

In the year of their first “friendship” anniversary celebrating the day they met, Kim, Annie, and Joe celebrated at Joe’s house. Kim wanted to give Joe something special for being a good friend that year. Beforehand, Kim told Annie to go to eBay to buy a silver coin for Joe. But, Kim intended to buy it at her house, but she forgot to go over the plan with Annie.

She was embarrassed and sadly told Joe that she had forgotten. Joe didn’t care, but Annie did. So, after dinner, Annie went into Joe’s computer room and went on eBay. She clicked her mouse on “US Coins and Currency” and selected “Gold (before 1933)”. When she started to look at the beautiful and shiny coins, she pressed “Buy it now”. The next coin was pretty, so she hit the “Buy It Now” button. She did this for over 100 coins. She discounted the fact that she had loaded Joe’s account with more than $280,000 in gold coins.

He then returned to Joe’s living room, where the adults were talking. She interrupted saying “gold coins” but was ignored. After a few hours, Kim and Annie headed home.

Annie kept saying, “Fun, fun, fun… gold coins for ‘pa-pa’,” all the way home. Kim didn’t understand at first, but when she got home, she asked her daughter what she did on Joe’s computer. Suddenly, the row of cell phones from her. It was Joe who sounded a little concerned.

“Kim, did you know that Annie bought 100 gold coins on my eBay account?”

“What??!!” She answered.

“She bought $280,000 worth of gold coins.” She said in a panic. “Most of them cannot be returned.”

“Oh, God…Annie!…Come here!”

“I can’t afford this!”

“I’m so sorry this happened! We shouldn’t have come. I’m going to have a serious talk with Annie,” she said in an angry voice, still stunned. “I will discipline her and help you get your money back. I promise! But the truth is that she likes to look at me when I go online and go to eBay to look, not to buy jewelry. So this is partially my fault.” .”

“I should have turned off my computer. So all Annie had to do was log on to eBay. Damn!” “I’ll explain to her that she can’t get into other people’s computers…I can’t believe this! If she were older, she’d force her to get a job and all her income would go to you.”

“Well, let’s not go in there. I’ll have to work more hours. I’ve been working to save my money.”

As much as Kim apologized to Joe, he knew he would have to work for more money. Joe told his co-workers about him at the mine, and they really meant it. They thought it was ironic that he was a miner and was “mined” by a girl.

Joe opted to fill in for his co-workers if they got sick. Also, he told them that he would work more hours. His friends were great and told him they would help when they could.

From time to time, this coal mine has produced small nuggets of gold. This coal mine had a wonderful policy that if a large amount of gold was found, each miner would get 5% of the total amount of gold.

As much as Joe wanted to find a lot of gold, that dream would go on forever.

Two months later, one of Joe’s friends was pounding on a dirt wall, until he found what looked like a vein of gold. As he kept hitting him, he led him to a yellow rock, when he examined it, he yelled “Goooooolllldddd!” that reverberated through all the tunnels.

Thirty miners pounced on each other and ran to the spot where the gold was discovered. They all used their pickaxes and lightly dug around the rock. The golden rock surface continued for two more feet. That afternoon, the miners spent their time removing various large and small rocks from the side of the earthen wall.

When they were done, they weighed the entire amount, which came to 125 pounds. The current price of an ounce of gold was $1,400 per ounce. If there were 16 ounces in a pound it would be $22,400 per pound. The total of all gold calculated at $2,800,000! Each of the 30 miners would get $140,000. Joe was so happy that he was only able to pay for half of his gold coin collection, but thanks to his friends, the 30 of them gave Joe $2500 of what they earned from the discovery. So Joe got an extra $75,000. So in total he had $215,000! What good friends!

Joe paid off most of the gold coin collection and was able to make ends meet.

A year later, he and Kim got married. However, he changed Annie’s computer account so that she couldn’t visit sites that sold her products.