MYTHS DISGUISED AS TRUTHS

Blog number Ninety-six                                              25 June 2007

The myths were; that it was always a rare thing to see a two dollar bill because, as reported in newspapers, that was because nobody wanted them.  They were supposedly bad luck.  Then fifty cent pieces became a rarity.  No reason given to us.  When the Susan B. Anthony dollar coins came out, they were not accepted "because people didn't want a woman's picture on their coins."  This was also the supposed reason for the nonacceptance by the public of the Sacajawean (sic?) dollar. So they recently made a new dollar coin that has no woman's picture on it.  That'll work!

The truths are; two dollar bills were rare because the banks never had any on hand. That's like not having any auto dealerships and then explaining the lack of drivers on the public being afraid of mechanical things.

I use $2 bills, mostly for tips, but also for small purchases, but I have to specially order them and this was a problem for a while because the tellers would always respond to my request with, "it's not possible." 

I finally had to ask to see the manager and when asked why, I told the teller that I wanted to order $600 worth of two dollar bills.  At the same time I also ordered $200 worth of fifty cent pieces.

I got my order two days later and the girl who had taken my order and gave them to me asked if I would tell her what I wanted them for.  She didn't say, "What do you want them for?"  She said, "Could I ask you what you use them for?"

I wanted to tell her that I liked to watch them burn, but I didn't.  I felt like she thought I was using them for some nefarious activity. 

Like funding terrorists.

Or slipping them into lap dancer thongs.

I used to order Susan B. Anthony dollars but quickly gave that up after several times mistaking them for quarters.  Whose bright idea was that anyhow, to make them look so nearly like quarters?  Don't they have meetings on decisions like this?  The reason I didn't like them was not because a woman's picture was on it.  I didn't like them because they occasionally cheated me out of seventy-five cents.

When the gold dollars first came out, you could find them occasionally for about a month, then they too disappeared because "nobody wanted them."  I went to several banks before I found one that carried them.  I don't know why the "powers that be" blame the public for not using stuff that they can't get.

One of the big surprises was the ignorance surrounding fifty cent pieces especially.  Several people asked me what they were.  Some of these people were in their thirties.  One woman said, upon reading the coin, "Huh.  A half dollar.  How much is that worth?"

One bum, upon receiving a gold dollar looked at it carefully before asking me what it was and if it was worth anything.  When I told him it was worth a dollar, he said, "They don't have these in Texas where I come from."

I gave two $2 bills to a girl in a hardware store in payment for some washers and she first marked them with a pencil to see if they were counterfeit, then held them one by one up to the light and then turned her back to me and was peering at something on the desk with them.  I thought she was looking a numbered list of counterfeit $2 bills.  I asked her what she was doing.  She wouldn't answer.  I asked again, still no answer.  I then asked her if she had a list of counterfeit $2 bills she was looking at.  No answer. 

She finally turned around and I asked her again what she had been looking at and she told me she looked at them under a black light.  She said they didn't get many of them in there.  What struck me was that anyone would think that a counterfeiter would counterfiet $2 bills instead of the more common and more lucrative larger denominations.  And I would try to pass four whole dollars worth for a net profit of maybe sixty cents plus my washers?  Ye gads!

You know, sometimes it just makes sense to ask the very people that use an object just what it is that they do or don't like about it.  Funny thing is that people aren't that hard to find.  All one of these bright boys has to do is to walk outside their office and lo and behold!  Thousands of common people who know exactly why they do or don't use some item.

Is it too much to ask of people who have power over us common little folk that they do a littlesimple thinking once is a while?

MY FIRST REAL LIFE HERO (Cont.)

Blog number Ninety-five      06 June 2007 (D Day already?)

Only a few days after we met, I and him and his brother Robert, were walking in the neighborhood - down alleys mostly.  We came to one shed and Bud walked in, picked up a pump or something like that - it had a motor on it, painted green or red, I think.

I thought it a bit odd for a six year old to own something like that, and why was he keeping it in a place not his yard?  I didn't ask any questions though, and I think I figured out not much later that he had stolen it.

He said he got kicked out of Catholic school for stealing from the poor box.  He was still religious though - he made us doff our caps whenever we walked by a Catholic church.

One day we met a group of other boys and two men offered a nickel to whomever would fight.  Bud and this larger fat kid said they would do it.  The fat kid would swing a roundhouse, Bud would duck under and come up with an upper cut.  This went on for a couple more times until the fat kid started crying.  Swing, punch, swing, punch.  I don't know where Bud learned that.  He reminded me of one of the Dead End Kids.

One day we were in a filling station where there was a pay phone.  Bud wanted to call a friend that had a phone. We didn't have any money, but there was a slot on the machine that said, "Coin return," So Bud asked a man standing there if he would give him a nickel so he could call, telling him he would give the nickel right back when it came out of the coin return slot. I remember Bud saying to the man, "See?  It says 'coin return' right there.  You'll get your nickel back."

I couldn't figure out why the guy didn't go for \this.  Obviously we were going to get the nickel back so what could he lose?

Another day Bud found an old fly sprayer that had oil in it and was swinging it around and accidentally sprayed a lady's nylons.  She cussed and cussed at him.  She was mad!

We left Des Moines in 1942 to go live on the farm with my grandparents and I didn't see Bud again until after I was married in 1950.  MY then wife and I went to his old house and there he was, lying on the bed with a rifle, shooting flies on the ceiling.  He told us he had just gotten paroled for car theft.