Covid Revives Wooden Currency

TENINO, Wash. -- The blue-cheese salad dressing, butter, ground turkey, cans of grain-free dog food and new toothbrush came to $24.97. Laurie Mahlenbrei handed the cashier a slice of wood marked $25, and walked out.

The wooden currency is good only in the small city of Tenino, part of an effort to help residents and merchants alike get through the economic fallout of the pandemic. Decades after it created a similar program during the Great Depression, the city is dipping into its emergency accounts to give people in need up to $300 per month in wooden currency to spend.

Just about every business in town, from the gas station and auto-body shop to Don Juan's Mexican Kitchen, is accepting the wooden scrip. The currency, made of maple veneer, is about the thickness, size and flexibility of an index card and printed on the same 1890s-era press that once printed the Depression currency and the newspaper. It can't be used for alcohol, tobacco or marijuana.

The businesses can redeem the scrip for real dollars at City Hall -- or sell them on the side. Some merchants said they've been offered three times the face value from coin collectors around the country.

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