EXTRA: $40, and a new life

My Aunt Christina (who always wants me to say she's my favorite, even though I don't want to bloat her ego) managed to come up with an interesting piece of documentation -- the official record of when her father (my maternal grandfather) first entered the United States on a summer day in 1926.

And for what it's worth, he had $40 in his pockets at that significant moment in his life. Definitely a detail I'm going to have to use when I tell the tale of my family tree in the future.

THE U.S. INFLATION Calculator estimates that's about $552 in monetary value today. Or about one week's pay at some jobs I have held in my life. How many of us would be willing to skip away from everything we know with just a week's salary to tide us over?

It definitely makes me think more highly of the life change that my grandfather made nearly a century ago.

And for coming up with this documentation, I may have to break down and give my Aunt Christie the praise she has long sought.

  -30-