The Streets Paved Gold

The other day, I heard a man say,

"I came to America because I heard the streets were paved with gold. When I got here, found out three things: First, the streets weren't paved with gold; second, they weren't paved at all: and third, I was expected to pave them."

He said it with a laugh. The kind of laugh that’s more memory than mirth.

It stuck with me. Maybe because it reminded me of my father. Or maybe because it sounded like something he would’ve said, had he lived long enough to laugh about it.

Papa died in the spring of 1911. Not from disease, nor from age, but from a fall down an elevator shaft in a building he was helping construct on 8th Avenue. They said his foot slipped. That’s what the foreman told Mama when she opened the door to his knock. He didn’t meet her eyes. Just stood there like he was reading off a telegram.

I was twelve. Old enough to understand, not old enough to accept it.