The Prelude ...
It is no secret that those of us that are intimately
involved in running a cash register at a little country store watch for what,
in my family, is called "funny money." Now I am not talking about counterfeit bills
though occasionally we do receive notices from the Vermont State Police that
fake scrip is making the rounds in the area.
What I am talking about is the occasional bit of silver
coin, 50-cent pieces, wheat pennies, a two-
dollar bill or anything out of the
ordinary. Just last week, I found a buffalo nickel -- standing out like a bison
in deer country -- as I counted the cash drawer. Turns out it’s worth about six
cents without a readable date. I saved it anyway. I always think about the
stories those odd bits of coin would tell if only they could speak of the hands
that had spent them over the years.
The Story ...
Today I went to a flea market where the modest size and
mellow weather dictated chit-chat with the motley crew of vendors. If you have
time to really explore a flea market you will find it part history lesson
(American Flyer sleds, coal shuttles, grinders for everything from meat to
raisins), part creative entrepreneurship (crocks and wooden wheelbarrows
planted with geraniums and necklaces woven and beaded with ladder yarn) and
part Comedy Central (where else could you find a prosthetic leg complete with
tube sock and worn sneaker?).
Always drawn to the closed glass cases that house shiny
bits of old jewelry and miniature treasures, I stopped in the shade to gaze at
an array of coins ... Mercury dimes, Indian-head pennies and the like. Telling
the scruffy and bearded tender of this stall of the family penchant for saving
oddities out of the cash register, he launched into the curious story of his
old friend, Constantine.
Constantine, it seems, ran a little country store with
his longtime girlfriend, Gracy. He kept
a little waste basket under the cash register where he placed every two-dollar
bill that came his way. He promised Gracy that when the basket was full he
would take her to the altar and marry her.
Now, Gracy had been his trusted employee for a long time
and she was a patient woman but her patience was growing thin and the basket's
contents grew ever so slowly. Over the years she had helped Constantine solve a
lot of problems and now she set about solving what she saw as the problem of
her lengthening spinsterhood. She called
everyone she knew and enlisted their help to call everyone they knew to come to
the store and pay for their purchases with two-dollar bills. If the bank
tellers in the small Vermont town knew the reason for the sudden requests for
two dollar bills, they kept the secret.
In a surprisingly short time the little waste basket was
full, almost overflowing. Constantine knew he was in trouble. For so many years
his word had been his bond and it did not even occur to him to renege on this
most solemn promise. Besides, he did love her and knew she would not be a
troublesome wife.
And so, the wedding was held, paid for by two-dollar
bills. Because they were modest people, the ceremony was modest, with
wildflowers picked from the meadow and iced tea and cupcakes for the
guests. After so many years of hard
work, Constantine and Gracy wanted to spend their money on a trip ... a real
honeymoon.
So off they set for Cape Cod. They didn’t live so very
far away but this seemed like a charmed place of mystical and mythical
proportions. Dressed in his best new Carhartt pants and a new plaid shirt, over
a thousand dollars’ worth of two-dollar bills secured by red rubber bands
tucked here and there among their modest luggage, Constantine stepped up to the
registration desk at the Holiday Inn.
No, he did not want to pay with a credit card ... he had
cash. So he began to unroll the bills and place them in front of the startled
registrar.
It may have been company policy. It may have been the
very strangeness of the transaction. Whatever it was, the authorities were
called, and before Constantine and Gracy had their first honeymoon Heineken,
the Massachusetts State Police were at their door wanting to know where he had
obtained such a stash of cash. They were quite convinced that no one would have
come by this legally.
It took a bit of explaining and a half-dozen phone calls
to corroborate their story, but suspicion was eventually cleared and the newlyweds
enjoyed their honeymoon -- tipping lavishly with two dollar bills -- and
laughing at the new credit card society that had been thrust on them. They
spent every last one of those two-dollar bills before returning to the comfort
of their small town and cozy little store
They figured that if this was the worst of their troubles
then their union would be blessed. And it was ... a dime and a dollar at a time
they prospered and chuckled at their old-fashioned notion that cash was king!
I wonder, in the days of fraud, stolen identity, and
massive debt, if Constantine and Gracy were so far off the mark. After all, a
piece of plastic will never be able to tell the stories of a coin or a crumpled
banknote. A piece of plastic will never have the appeal of a two dollar bill
with old Tom Jefferson, peering as mysteriously as the Mona Lisa from his engraved
minting.
How many stories like Constantine and Gracy’s would he
tell if he could only speak?
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