Joe Coal became a miner when he was 18 years old. His father and mother were in poor health and neither of them 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. She bought groceries and other supplies to help her 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, Alabama, to buy supplies for him. As he got out of his truck, he saw a young woman who had dropped her purchases on the sidewalk. Joe walked over to her and helped her pick up her purchases. After all the bags were in his car, he introduced himself, although his face had black marks from digging in the mines. She told him that her name was “Kim” 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 decided to wait. Although Joe and Kim were attracted to each other, their backgrounds were markedly different. Although Joe had endured a difficult life, working in the mines, Kim’s parents were rich, but she did not like their conceited attitude. Kim did not look or act like a diva or live like a snob. He worked as a freelance 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 rush 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 gift Joe something special for being a good friend that year. Beforehand, Kim told Annie to go to eBay to buy Joe a silver coin. But, Kim had intended to buy it at her home, but forgot to go through with 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 to Joe’s computer room and got on eBay. You clicked the mouse on “US Coins and Coins.” And he selected “Gold (before 1933)”. When he started looking at the beautiful shiny coins, he pressed “Buy It Now”. The next coin was pretty, so he hit the “Buy It Now” button. He did this for over 100 coins. She dismissed the fact that she had loaded Joe’s account with more than $ 280,000 in gold coins.

Then he 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 drove home.

Annie kept saying, “Fun ,,,, fun … fun … gold coins for ‘pa-pa'” on the way home. Kim didn’t understand at first, but when they got home, she asked her daughter what she was doing on Joe’s computer. Suddenly his cell phone rang. 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.

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

“Oh my … Annie !! … Come here!”

“I can’t afford these!”

“I’m so sorry this happened! We shouldn’t have come. I’m going to have a serious conversation with Annie,” he said in an angry voice, still stunned. “I will discipline her and help pay her. I promise! But the truth is, she likes to look at me when I go online and I 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 onto eBay. Damn it!” “I’ll explain to her that she can’t access other people’s computers … I can’t believe this! If she was older, I would make her get a job and all her income would go to you.”

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

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

Joe chose to take the place of his co-workers if they got sick. In addition, he told them that he would dedicate more hours. His friends were great and told him they would collaborate when they could.

From time to time, this coal mine has produced little gold nuggets. 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 wished he had found a lot of gold, that dream would go on forever.

Two months later, one of Joe’s friends was hitting a wall of dirt, 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 “Goooolllldddd!” that reverberated through all the tunnels.

Thirty miners got together and ran to the spot where the gold was discovered. They all put their picks to use and dug gently around the rock. The surface of the golden rock continued for two more feet. That afternoon, the miners spent their time removing various rocks that were large and small from the side of the earth wall.

When they finished, they weighed the total amount, which came to 125 pounds. The current one-time price of gold was $ 1,400 an ounce. If there were 16 ounces in a pound, it would be $ 22,400 a pound. The total of all the gold calculated at $ 2,800,000! Each of the 30 miners would get $ 140,000. Joe was so happy that he could only afford half of his collection of gold coins, but thanks to his friends, the 30 would give Joe $ 2,500 of what they earned from the discovery. So Joe received an additional $ 75,000. So in total he had $ 215,000! What good friends!

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

A year later, he and Kim were married. However, Annie’s computer account was changed so that she would not access the sites that sold her products.