When’s the last time you stopped to look at your spare change? For writer Ron Weber, one ordinary find leads him on an unexpected American odyssey.
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As my hand dipped under the surface, I was reminded that though the sun felt warm on this mid-May day, it was a basic fact of science that air warms up much faster than water. Straining to reach the shiny object resting in the sand 2 feet down on the bottom of Lake Namakagon, I tried my best to keep frigid water from spilling in over the top of my waders. In a millisecond, the sensory receptors in my fingertips sent a message to my brain that I was a quarter richer.
How had the coin got there? I wanted to believe that maybe it had fallen out of the pocket of my shorts jumping off the dock as a teen in some long ago summer, first covered and then uncovered by the wave shifted sand. Or just as likely, maybe someone had recently thrown it into the lake as a good luck offering. However it had gotten there, it was now pulled out of purgatory from the lake bed and returned to circulation in the land of the living.
A 1979 quarter on an odyssey across the UW-Madison campus. Maureen McCollum/WPR
Closer inspection revealed that it was minted in 1979 in Denver. One of a class of almost 490 million, I could only imagine all the journeys and adventures it had been on over the past 45 years. It may have accompanied an executive on a business trip to Europe, the Far East or Australia. Maybe it was present in New Orleans on an evening in January 1997 when the Packers returned the Lombardi trophy to its rightful place in Titletown. Or perhaps it resided in Kevin Costner’s pocket as he stopped for a coffee on his way to the set of “Dances with Wolves.” It may even have been in New York City one day in September 2001 when our world changed forever.
It was intriguing to think of those exotic destinations, but more likely than not it had only been on a dizzying carousel of more mundane interactions within the wheels of commerce. Still, it was luckier than some of its classmates, which no doubt wound up entombed in the cushions of a couch, underneath a rarely moved washing machine, or dropped in the park and buried under the soil, destined to be rust to dust unless some wanderer with a metal detector could grant it reprieve. With an average life span of 30 years, there are many ways coins can go out of circulation.
A 1979 quarter poses on a map of Wisconsin next to Weyerhaeuser, where writer Ron Weber lives. Maureen McCollum/WPR
Now that I had plucked it from the lake, I was the keeper of the coin and it was a daunting responsibility. I wanted to make its next adventure something special. Maybe I could take it with on a planned vacation out west closer to its birthplace. A stop at the iconic Delta Diner near Drummond gave me the idea of memorializing it in one of those machines that flattens coins into keepsakes. No, I realized there was really only one thing I had left to do.
The quarter was in my pocket on a trip back to Kenosha around the holidays. As I had planned, we stopped at the Kwik Trip in Tomah though we didn’t really need gas. I topped off the tank and we went in to get some drinks and a snack. Having paid for the gas at the pump, the total for our food items was $11.57. I handed the cashier 11 dollars and fished 57 cents from my pocket, including old 1979. She unceremoniously threw it into the cash drawer. My eyes were on the coin as the drawer shut. I half smiled as I looked up at the cashier.
Turning to leave, I glanced at the three people in line behind me. Maybe one of them would be the next to care for the coin.
Walking back to our car, I studied the license plates parked outside. Minnesota was well represented, as was Wisconsin and a couple of Illinois. One from Nebraska and another from Pennsylvania gave me hope for a more dramatic change of scenery for the coin. I had chosen to spend it here at the confluence of two major interstate highways for that very reason. It was my hope that in its “golden” years, it would continue to do just what it was minted to do. What adventures awaited, whether it be in the east, west, north or south? I could only imagine.
A 1979 quarter in a recording booth at Wisconsin Public Radio in Madison, Wis. Maureen McCollum/WPR
