Fun Coin Stories

Because lightheartedness never goes awry . . . I'll share mine first . . . Kennedy Is A God When You're Five, or, How Nina Learned About Half Dollars.


I grew up in a teensy-tiny town that, Earle will back me up on this, was kind of like living inside a Norman Rockwell painting. Every week we had bingo at the VFD social hall, and although it was technically "gambling," the ladies who ran it declared that I could play since we were "donating," not "wagering," money. And so once a month for several years, my mom and I would go play Bingo.

Very early in my Bingo-playing years the firehall upgraded from the old hard-back cards with plastic chips, to paper disposable tickets on which you made marks with a thing I thought was called a "dobber" and that it was invented by the man Dobbins Landing was named for, and that it was this miraculous invention that made him famous enough to get a whole dock named after him.

This meant that a single game now consisted of two boards, rather than one, and I had a hard time keeping up. Still, I played my little heart out and loved it, and when I got bored of playing I'd draw pictures on the remaining pages with my dobbers and a pack of hi-liters my mom would bring with us.

And then one day . . . one day there was an $80 for an "any bingo"--line, diagonal, four corners, postage stamp. I was frantically filling in my last few numbers after someone else yelled Bingo, as the caller asked if anyone else had a Bingo . . . .

. . . and then he called out "New Board" . . .

. . . and I slammed my dobber down on my page and stood up on my chair, screaming "BINGO! I HAVE A BINGO! I HAVE FIVE NUMBERS I HAVE A BINGO!!"

Of course everyone was extremely confused, because you can't get a bingo with only one number, and also, there was a tiny child screaming excitedly in the midst of a sea of blue-haired old ladies. So they sent over a volunteer, who as kindly as possible told me that because I didn't announce my bingo before the new board was called, I had not won.

And so, of course, my little five-year-old heart was broken, never to recover from the multitudes of unimagined joys that forty dollars could have bought, and I started to cry. One of the firehall ladies tried to convince me to stop in that kindly-little-old-lady way, and finally the volunteer who ran the cashbox came up: he thought it was wonderful that I didn't give up, he said, and even though I couldn't get a normal prize he had something very special for me.

So he told me to put my hands together like I was getting a drink out of a kitchen faucet, and tipped ten big, shiny coins into my hands.

I was totally enthralled! I had no idea what they were, and a very, VERY vague idea that the man on them was Prince Charming from Cinderella. My mom picked through them and showed me one a little different from the rest, and told me it was silver and that she would give me fifty cents to spend if she could have it. I scoffed at the idea, and she promised to keep it safe for me--so finally, with nine big shiny coins and three quarters, I gave it up. I don't remember what those coins ever got spent on--but I sure remember getting 'em.


Oh, and as for that silver big, shiny coin, the last time I saw it I was seventeen, and Mom did indeed still have it tucked away in her jewelry box for me. It might since have disappeared (cross-country moves have a way of doing that), but I'd bet if we dug through everything, we'd find it.