Throwing money around

[jhetley]

Another minor puzzlement of life: Maine has a "bottle bill" with a deposit for beverage bottles and cans. So folks still throw the things out their car windows, but at least the winos and homeless can wander the streets and highways of our fair state and pick the empties up for $.05 cash. See them walking with their bags, see them looking under bushes and pawing through the garbage.

But why do I still find actual money lying on the sidewalk? Regularly? Like as, coins and occasional bills? Now I'll grant that I probably spend more energy picking up a penny than I could get back in food value from the blasted thing, but dimes? Quarters? A $5.00 bill lying on the sidewalk? Do all the winos have cataracts and can't see anything smaller than a Bud can?

Comments

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Have you read Megan Lindholm's Wizard of the Pigeons? Her first novel, I think; your observation reminds me of it.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've read that one. Just checked the library's on-line catalog and they only have one under her real name, as opposed to Robin Hobb.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

She still publishes as Lindholm in the UK, I think--but yeah, Wizard is out of print, and has been for (mumble) decades. Alas.

[pernishus.livejournal.com]

Bills are a rarity on Haligonian streets, but there is a plethora of pennies, and lately I have been acquiring a fair number of dimes, too.

[kinzel.livejournal.com]

Ummm ..

not all winos and homeless, either, though some have may run out of their benefits and may be on their way to homeless; some are just hungry. At a local park in Skowhegan I discovered a wonderful trove of emptees (where they collected when thrown off a cliffside) while we were waiting for Del Rey to pay us -- that would be the year we moved to Maine. I picked up about $40 worth in a couple days, which really helped while we waited for the Random House bookkepper to return from Hawaii. 'course, $40 went a long way in them days....

Change -- I see kids clustered around payphones phones (those without their own cellphones) and they frequently throw pennies away, and sometimes nickels. I've seen kids softing pockets for pennies and coins and dropping them on the street. You know, to show how they don't have to worry about money.

We have a bottle we call "The Goddess Bottle" and we fill it with street-found money and sometimes our own pocket-change. It usually buys us a breakfast or two at WorldCon, or on vacation.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Wife and I exchange "found money" -- both grew up with the saying, "Find a penny, give it to a friend." Touching sentimentality, after thirty+ years together....