"Once there was a place." This is how my grandfather would start off. He would say, "This is a place I dreamed of as a kid." He said when he was young he used to lie on a mossy hill where he would dream of what his life would be like if he could only get to this place.

My grandfather always gets a twinkle in his eye when he talks to me about leaving Ireland and coming with his folks to the land known to him as Freedom, but to us, now, as America. He tells me stories about the boat ride coming over. Then a tear always forms in his eye when he tells when he first landed on American soil.

He says it was tough adjusting at first, but he could always get through the hard times when he thought of the woman he loved and the family they could raise.

To raise money to support his family, he looked for the opportunities he had heard about. He wanted to be rich like those people he saw in the papers or magazines. He looked but couldn't find anything; no one wanted an immigrant to work in his business. After he finally got a job that paid him enough to get his feet off the ground, he found a nice house with a white picket fence and a front and backyard. Then he knew he had realized his dream.

He had everything he wanted: a job that paid well; a loving family; a nice house that he could call his own. My grandfather said he couldn't have wished for anything more from American until his kids grew up and gave him even more - grandchildren. This was the story he would tell me about why he wanted to come to America. After it was over, he would give me the biggest hug and tell me to dream and to try to get my dreams to come true, just as he had done.c