Dig Up My Gold: But I Won’t Say Where It’s Buried

Dig Up My Gold: But I Won’t Say Where It’s Buried
Arthur Birkby
Tate Publishing, LLC
ISBN: 1-5988624-8-0
Non-Fiction, Biography, Memoir
Reviewed by Lee Gooden

Resorting to the use of clichés a description usually demonstrates a weakness in articulation, a limited vocabulary and a lack of imagination. But when it comes to describing Arthur Birkby’s memoir, Dig Up My Gold: But I Won’t Say Where It’s Buried, the cliché “Truth is stranger than fiction” is more than appropriate.
He begins by introducing the myriad members of his eccentric family, like his Grammom and Grampop the cigar maker. “He was an avowed atheist and socialist, and was not reluctant to try to persuade other to his views.” Birkby also discusses his Uncle Bert, who was a shrewd business man that mislead the people in his company that Birkby was his own son, although he had never married and dedicated his life to taking care of his mother.
Birkby’s family lived through the Great Depression. People who had to exist in such poverty were forced to save and stretch their tiny sums of money and food, mend their own clothes, fix their own appliances, cut all sorts of corners and make do with what little they had. After the Great Depression had passed and America had a higher standard of living, the survivors of the Depression were so terrified of being poor again that they continued to practice an extreme thriftiness. They were so conditioned by the fear of poverty that the generations between Birkby’s and the present found their practices almost comical. Birkby writes,”My mother had and automatic wash machine for laundry, she would stop the wash cycle midway through, and put in another load of dirty clothes to save on hot water and soap.”
Although Arthur Birkby grew up during a poor socio-economic time at the tail end of the Great Depression, came of age when he turned eighteen and was drafted to fight in World War Two, he never lost his sense of humor. Probably his prodigy like aptitude he had with the piano and his love of music kept him sane in insane situations. Throughout all his embarrassing moments, like wearing underwear that were too big and hung past his short pants while he was on stage he managed to maintain a semblance of dignity. There were so many incidents where Birkby could have died or been seriously injured that one cannot help but think that he may have been protected by a higher power. His anecdotes about growing up, his family, jobs, and school show a person with a simple but touching naivety that becomes a man with the wisdom to know that life is a privilege. Birkby’s artistic sensitivity and his innate goodness and fairness made him go out of his way to make things “even” for family and friends. He is affable and funny with a zest and passion that did not let him become a mindless automaton in a welfare state, or be traumatized by his role as a Chaplin’s assistant or Military policeman during World War Two.
In his eighty years, Arthur Birkby has developed a way with language and story- telling where the reader see through his eyes and live the absurdity of his and their own human condition. His Grammom summed it up when she told his father to “Dig up my gold, but I won’t tell you where it’s buried.” Little did she know the legacy that she passed onto her grandson, who has dug up the gold of his experiences and has philanthropically shared his riches with the world.