This portrait was made with an Agfa box camera in about 1955/56, before I had an inkling what photography was all about. Now I know a little more, I realize how lucky I was to get this shot. My grandfather was a good friend and we spent many happy hours together. He imparted his life experiences to me and hammered in the dictum, "You get a fair day's pay a for fair day's work, but you do the bloody work first, boyo!" This, from a man who had been a miner from the age of twelve. Because of his small stature, he was consigned to the smallest coal seams, working on his side pecking the coal out and shoving it back, between his legs, to his thirteen years old brother to load into the coal drams. He was a man of indomitable spirit who finally retired at age eighty-seven, dying two years later at eighty-nine.