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Overnight their dirt-poor family became quite a celebrity. Very quickly it became known throughout the Dalmatian
mountains and valleys that the American has returned and has brought back a boatload
of money. From mouth to mouth, the boatload
swiftly grew into a mountain of wealth of epic proportions.
Everybody knew that this father has been gone for a very
long time. And, even if half of what was known of his character was true, he must
have saved every hard-earned penny, working all kinds of jobs, day and night, scraping
and saving, saving and scraping, thinking of his family, dreaming of the day
when all the years of sacrifices – his
and theirs - will finally be richly rewarded.
And the day has arrived at last!
No wonder that everyone was shocked when the money that the boy’s
father brought from the far-off country, turned out to be quite useless in
their village.
See, this village was rather remote and the villagers had
not much contact with the outside world. Daily their world revolved around
minding their vineyards and minding the tobacco fields, and the few scrawny goats
and donkeys that grazed on scrawny bramble bushes scattered over the side of
the mountain.
Nobody had seen much less held a dollar note. They recognized neither names or the faces,
nor the language of this foreign currency.
Some even begun to laugh and mock the boy’s father that the money isn’t
real at all and it had absolutely no value except for maybe starting fire on the open
hearth. 
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