Put a lid on it

Someone really ought to put a lid on Koa Tio. The man died in China while visiting friends there almost one hundred years ago which doubtless created some complications in the execution of his last will and testament. What happened to his 20,000 pesos and Philippine real estate empire in Santa Cruz, Manila? I really couldn't care less. I suppose that one could speculate on the possibility that some of his descendants may have emigrated to the U.S. and might even be living somewhere in America. I would not be surprised if that were the case given the fact that Koa Tio was said to be loyal to the United States and had a special U.S. passport issued to Filipinos loyal to the U.S., winner of the Spanish-American War. Still, there are many "Koa Tios" here in the U.S. We are all immigrants from somewhere else and our ancestors brought with them whatever they could, I imagine, most importantly themselves. What is American treasure? Is it the pieces of eight fought over by the pirates of the Caribbean or is it the precious lives of the people themselves? Rich or poor, it matters not. American treasure is something else, something intangible, something that cannot be counted or discounted so easily. If you try to count it you would have a problem. The love of family, the loyalty of friends, faith in God, these things cannot be quantified and reduced to a balance sheet. There are times when doing the right thing does not pay so just having plenty of gold bars stashed away in a Santa Cruz vault does not prove that you alone represent what is good and right. It is more complicated than that. The United States was never a Spanish colony, fortunately for us, or we would never would have anything. We would just be slaves to some Mexican-style dictatorship, I imagine.