Thursday, February 7, 2013

Tea Mining

    by Victor Sullivan   © 2013
A tale of thrift and theft during World War 2

In a dull, gloomy, Irish town in the late 1930s. one of the general grocery shops was run by a clever, business-like widow with the help of her three children, two girls in their late teens and their fourteen-year-old brother, Danny. The family lived above the shop. With the war-clouds looming ever darker over late 1930s Europe, stories of impending hardship proliferated and those with appropriate wisdom took equally appropriate steps to mitigate whatever disasters might lie ahead. Some commodities would become scarce, she reasoned, difficult to source, better still if they became unobtainable, especially if she had the only source of such a commodity hidden securely....... It would have to have a long shelf-life, value would increase over time. Patience would be rewarded ten-fold or more!  Danny watched his mother's precautionary measures develop with interest and wondered of the anticipated profits might lead to an increase in the pitifully small weekly allowance he and his sisters received from the family business.