My Good Time Stories

One of the things I enjoy finding are true-life stories of normal, everyday people that inspire and demonstrate the power and determination of human spirit. Regardless of the socio-economic status of someone, it takes a special degree of willpower and dedication to finish a big project. It is also interesting how some individuals will keep a small object with them as a reminder of what is important to them to keep them motivated to complete the task at hand.

In 1869, nine-year-old Liang Fu stood alone near Promontory Summit, Utah, days after the golden spike was driven into the ground. In his pocket, he carried a small stone — smooth on one side, flat like a hammer head. His father had used it to test iron.

His father had come from Guangdong and died weeks before the railroad’s completion, crushed beneath a load of timber. The company left no marker. Just a final paycheck and a shovel.

Liang was too young to work, too foreign to belong. But he stayed.

He wandered the empty rail bed, collecting bent nails and bits of broken chain. He slept in a burned-out tent and boiled rice with melted snow. Sometimes, he pressed the stone against his cheek, as if it might still hold warmth.

One evening, a freedman named Ezra, also a worker, found Liang shivering under a boxcar.

“Where’s your people, boy?”

Liang didn’t speak English. He just showed the stone.

Ezra took him in. Fed him stew. Called him “Li’l Hammer.”

Liang would go on to work in a blacksmith shop, then run his own foundry in Nevada. He cast every tool himself. In his office sat a single object on velvet: the stone.

“It didn’t build the railroad,” he’d say, “but it told me I could finish something.”

This is a great story to help remind us that we can finish anything we start as long as we put our minds to it.

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Story in Quotes: Old American Life” – FaceBook