Contest - Win Morgan $ - Ancient - Bag Of Tokens - Bag Of World - US Commem

I wrote this one for a previous contest awhile ago, but it was never posted online.

A Whole Half Dime


Yes. that's me. No...I don't have dirt on my face. If you look carefully at the picture of my REV side, you will notice I have this awful plug going all the way through my head that sticks out through my "tail." The only upside to my plight is no one can ever say I am not worth a plugged nickel.

So how did this happen to me? I know. Most people guess I had a hole drilled through me to be put on a charm bracelet (more like harm bracelet considering what it would do to a coin). But my problems stem from an almost deaf, elderly gentleman who used me to pay for. but I am getting (ahem) ahead of myself.

The year was 1860, and I was only a few years old. I found out how truly strange the humans who made me could be. The man behind "The Incident," Mr. Ima N. Olgeezer, was no exception. However, a little background is still needed to fully understand my story.

At some time in prior history, someone, somewhere thought it would be a good idea to spend all day in the hot sun picking weeds and leaves. Then they wasted another day sorting all of the brush to lay each piece out in the hot sun! Why do this, you ask? The humans wanted to see how long it would take for the sun to crumple and totally dehydrate the leaves.

After days of working at this plant-killing task, more manpower was spent in gathering the now-worthless plant material into small bundles, and these lunatics would...get this.try to reverse the entire dehydration process by trying to put the water back into the crumpled, dead, leaves/weeds! They thought by pouring boiling water on them, that everything would be put back to normal!

It gets worse. What did they do with all the dead, newly-made-soggy, leftover plant material they worked so hard to dry out? Why, they throw it away of course!

However, even this was not the end of their ridiculous ritual. The height of human insanity had not yet been reached.

Do you know what the humans did with the now-tainted, discolored, waste-water the leaves failed to absorb? Well, naturally...they poured it down their throats! They called this weird ritual "making tea."

This "making tea" habit had become all the rage. Soon though, people got tired of working in the hot sun during the first couple of steps and sought a way to skip to the rehydrate-the-leaves part of their lunacy.

One day a brilliant idea snuck up on a man named Calabacious Theodore Leeber (who went simply by Ted. can you blame him?). The brilliant idea told Ted that people would come from all over and trade him their valuable coinage if he would give them his excess dehydrated plant remains! Since silver for dead leaves seemed a pretty smart trade, Ted opened a store where he sold four different types of tea. Below is a picture of the actual bins where Ted kept his brand name of "Whole Leaf Tea" bundles.


Ted priced the teas according to how exotic they were. Per small bundle, some whole tea leaves were 2 cents, some 3 cents, some were equal to my value of a Half Dime, and the rarest type of whole tea leaves were a dime per bundle (which you can see by looking at the prices at the bottom of the bins).

Now back to Mr. Olgeezer.

One day Ima had a hankering to buy some whole tea leaves to grind up (sometimes humans added this step since it seemed a fun thing to do), rehydrate, and throw away. Upon arriving at Ted's store, Ima followed the required procedure. A customer was supposed to copy the name of the item they wanted onto an order slip, and then present the slip to Ted at the checkout counter. Before retrieving items on the list, Ted made it a habit to read each order slip out loud to the customer so no mistakes would be made.

Ima only wanted a bundle of whole tea leaves that day, so he filled out the small order and gave it to Ted. The following conversation took place (remember Ima was hard of hearing).

Ted: Howdy, Mr. Olgeezer. How are you today? I hope everything with you is fine!

Ima: What's that, Sonny? Oh. time.. time. yeah...uh...'bout half pas' noon.

Ted: No, Ima, I was saying I hope you are doing well.

Ima: Nope Ted, sorry, cain't set a spell, I needs tuh git home. If'n there be any tax on this, whadduh ah owes yuh?

Ted: Uh, yeah. OK, let's check your order slip (reading the list out loud), Whole
Leaf Tea.

Ima: What's that? Speak up, Sonny!

Ted: I said, "Whole... leaf... tea."

Ima: Holes in muh teeth? No, I don't think so.

Ted: No. I was just reading what you wrote here.

Ima: Hear? Hear?! Yer right! I cain't hear nuthin' you be flappin' yer gums about! Yell
louder. Whuddah I owes yuh, tax n' all?

Ted: No tax, and you only ordered, oops, I mean...(stops, methodically lays the order
on top of the counter where Ima can see it, points to each word and yells loudly).
WHOLE LEAF, C. TED LEEBER, TEA... Half Dime

Ima: Well.if'n yuh says so. Git me a hammer 'n' nail.

Ted: Um... (Ted decided it was easier to just give him the hammer and nail instead of
trying to continue talking)

Ima: Dun weirder things I guess...



Then it happened! Ima laid me on the counter, put the nail on my head, and WHAM!



Ima: Here be thuh "HOLEY Seated Liberty half dime" yuh asked fer. Cain I have muh tea now?



*sigh*


How did I get plugged up? Well. mainly allergies.

@Earle42 — . I didn't see that coming!

The Elder — A short essay, not really an article. :)

###

Silver. It was a one word answer.

The question, though only 6 words, was already a passion. That is, if you believe chance or consequence.

See, a boy once trusted percentages and points, more than luster and legend. Diamonds would cut thoughts, but not the same that would cut glass. Lines were far from bells, and determined what was fair or foul.

A smile. Looking up from a loupe there was a smile. He knew a boy breaking away from a diamond sparkling in bright lights on a screen had big value, and he bought it. The exact moment when one recognizes not a moment, but when THE moment of something should be shared.

This is when he looked over and said, "Sonny, check this out." He continued with something like, "this is one of the most beautiful things you'll ever see."

What was in his hand? Possibly a relic from his wartime in the Pacific, or maybe a jewel that's been handed down for generations?

With eyes wide, he swirled around in his office chair. Expectations and excitement boiled over. What is in his hand? What is so important? What is it that seems so magical?

It was about that same point a commercial break was over. The moment could've cleared as the teams took the field, then a strikeout rounded the horn of a diamond, but that didn't happen.

Placed in hand were not what was expected, but was something I and everyone else on the planet knew the purpose of.

As he placed these in my hand, he talked art, value and history. History that spanned far into the past than these specific coins minted by the US represented.

It seemed like the conversation lasted hours. When I left his home office, it had probably only been 30 minutes. Greg Maddux was still on the mound.

But it's now 30 years later. Maddux is in the Hall, I still love baseball, Grandfather has passed, but my dad, brother and I still talk Coins.

The question was, "Grandfather, what are you looking at?"

Tradition, knowledge and sharing speak so far past a 6 word question and a 1 word answer.

Every contribution has been specific to the author. I will thoroughly enjoy shipping those 6 packages.

ElonU,

It was a joy to read your post. Although English is my second language, I envy your writing skills.

And Moxking, thanks for the unique contest. There are some interesting and helpful posts by members.

Oh, and congrats on your 10K+ posts. A respectable achievement in the forum, IMO.

Thanks folks! There are some really good articles in here and I appreciate this awesome contest. Really a testament to good people in this community. It's inspring me to possibly do a contest for my 500th post :)

Hey Bump,

First, I have published a book on depression era coinage and especially the resulting tokens, primarily during the 1929-1934 years, so I am quite fluent concerning the subject (891 pages, over 1 million words).

While your very brief synopsis did attempt to highlight specific reasons why the depression occurred you did leave out one of the most important aspects of that monetary failure.

That being that the vast majority of farm land was mortgaged and it was quite common for owned land to be used as collateral for even more land and with larger payments due. Likewise, the percentage of owned property, regardless of type, that had standing mortgages increased significantly as well.

At that time there were many states, including almost the entire south, that had a disproportionate percentage of taxes collected tied to property tax. When the balance of payments that could no longer be sustained from land taxes dropped nearly 40% in a single year, many states (Mississippi first) contemplated bankruptcy FOR THE STATE.

Coupled with the fact that there was a large percentage of the population that had no food, shelter, nor any kind of prospect for work. Many states were unable to help any of those desperate people with any assistance whatsoever.

What saved those states that were on the verge of bankruptcy? The introduction of sales taxes (similar to those used today) beginning in 1933.

I certainly didn't mean to hijack your topic. You might consider sales tax tokens as state issued "money" with hundreds of types and varieties and few over a few dollars each.

The history of those tokens would meld well with your interest in the depression era. Let me know if you have such an interest and I can supply you with whatever details you might desire.

Loved your article.