The heirloom – or its story – which has the greatest value?

Mounted on his horse, Siete Leguas, named for the seven leagues (21 miles) the steed could gallop without a rest, Francisco (Pancho) Villa and his men terrorized both sides of the border as they fired their rifles at anyone who stood in their path.
The year was 1910, and the place was Agua Prieta (Spanish for dark water), Sonora, Mexico, where, with one step to the north, you could be in Douglas, Arizona.
The owner of the small frontier establishment that served the community as a general store, trading post, pawnshop, gossip brokerage, and, when needed, therapy spa, studied the man’s ring lying on the counter before him.
In his 34 years, he had never seen a diamond even half that size.
The ring’s owner, a middle-aged Chinese man with clear signs of desperation on his face, looked not at the ring but at the other man, seeking a hint of how much cold, hard cash he might receive on a loan secured by the ring.
The storekeeper was my grandfather, Burt Redd, who was no jeweler and had no clue of the ring’s value, only that it was the most valuable piece of jewelry he’d ever seen.
“I will give you $25; it’s worth more than that, but we are not a bank, nor are we flush with cash.”
The men agreed on the interest rate, shook hands, and signed a simple pawn agreement.
The owner grabbed the cash, promised to retrieve the ring in a few weeks, and walked out the door. He was never seen again.
Grandpa wore that ring until his early death from a heart attack, twenty years later, at the end of the first year of The Great Depression.
After that, my Uncle Johnny, the World War II hero and Silver Star recipient, wore it until his early death in 1956.
Grandma was never one to wear jewelry, and for more than 20 years, it sat in a teacup behind a row of books in the living room.
As a single mom raising seven children, she entertained hundreds of visitors in that room, none of whom had the slightest idea of the value resting in that simple cup behind the books on her shelf.
Shortly before her death, Grandma gave it to my mom, who, interestingly, was named Jewell, and, unlike her mother, had no qualms about wearing jewelry.
Mom had it set in a feminine ring and wore it on special occasions.
My grandmother first told my mom, her youngest child, the story of the Chinese man who traded what was likely his most valuable possession for the equivalent of a bowl of pottage.
Mom, in turn, passed the story on to my siblings and me. I heard it enough that it is now etched permanently in my memory.
To this day, whenever I think of that story, my mind wanders back to 1910, and I become a fly on the wall, watching and listening to the exchange between Grandpa and the man with almond-shaped eyes and a heavy accent.
If I close my eyes and take a deep breath, I can see them. I can feel the warm desert breeze blowing through the open door, carrying the pleasant aroma of the creosote bush. I live, for a moment, in the atmosphere of that room as the men negotiate.
Then the questions flood my mind. What stream of events led my Grandpa to the life of a merchant in a frontier town on the border?
When the Mexican Revolution broke out, why did he stay?
Did he ever feel the rush of a bullet passing by his head?
Did he ever come face-to-face with Pancho Villa, and if so, what did he think of the man?
What did my grandmother think of such a life?
Then came the questions about the other man.
What was a Chinese man doing in the miserably hot borderlands during a war?
What became of him and his family?
Where are they now?
Have I ever met one of his descendants?
Was he the only Chinese person in that frontier region at the time, or were there many?
And if so, why were they there?
What crisis had occurred in his life that led him to sacrifice his most valuable possession for a pittance?
These questions, and others like them, have ignited an unquenchable passion in me to learn about the day-to-day lives of my forebears.
From those questions, I have jumped into hundreds of rabbit holes and emerged with a better understanding of many things, among them, my family’s history, the Mexican Revolution, and the Mexican people and their culture.
Stories are the assets that bind families through generations, through ups and downs, through never-ending crises, through heartaches, and through tragedies.
Stories teach us perseverance and hope toward a brighter future.
The diamond is just stuff, indeed, the equivalent of a bowl of pottage.
But stories, once written, become the legends to be told by grandfathers to grandchildren sitting on their knees. They become priceless!
• • • • •
I never learned if my grandfather ever saw Pancho Villa, but my grandmother did.
She saw him ride up a dusty street in Colonia Juarez, Chihuahua. Her comment, “He was just another dusty man on a horse.”