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InnerViews: The never-cashed $2 checks
Opinion Jun 28, 2013
'Paul' photo by Terry Miller
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“I guess I’ll never cash these checks now,” said my longtime friend Bill.
One look, and I had to agree with him. In his hands were two yellowed checks for $2 each, made out to Bill. They were slightly wrinkled and very fragile looking. One was dated March 15, 1937; the other, December 24 of the same year.
Bill had never cashed them and, indeed, they’d been stashed away in a drawer many years ago and totally forgotten. In the late ’60s they surfaced again when Bill’s mother died and the family was going through her belongings.
“But why?” I asked him. “Why didn’t you cash them? Couldn’t you have used the money?” Back in 1937, money was scarce. I persisted. “Did you somehow lose them when you were a kid?”
Quietly, almost shyly, my friend replied.
“My dad gave me this one,” he said, “for my 15th birthday. The second one was for Christmas. But we were deep into the Depression back then. I knew my folks couldn’t afford to part with even the $2, so I just never cashed them.”
Not that Bill was without money in those Depression days, for-like most of us-he was no stranger to work. He had a paper route and sold Saturday Evening Post and Collier’s magazine subscriptions. He mowed lawns and spaded gardens.
His cushiest job, though, was working at the Dodge Theater in our small town, Dodgeville, Wisconsin. As ushers, he and his buddies got to see the movies free. He also cleaned the theater every day, and changed the marquee between movies. For that he earned a magnificent $3 a week. Parenthetically, his check was for only $2.97. Why? Because, Bill explained, Social Security had just come in, and 3 cents were deducted from his pay.
The days are long past when Bill could have used his birthday and Christmas gift money. He remained in his hometown where he became the owner of a lumber company and a highly successful builder of homes. But he keeps the checks stuck over his desk as a reminder of the time when a total of $4 was a small fortune for a teenager – but a teenager who already knew the value of that money and what it meant to his family by his not spending it.
These days when people moan about the “hard times” we’re in, and wonder whether things have ever been so bad, Bill remembers those gifts from his loving parents and says, “Yes, I remember; I remember when times were really hard.” And he gently sets the bills back onto his desk.
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