The Silver Dollar

One of my friends posted a pix today of a Pacman token he carries with him for luck.  The counterposts were equally intriguing as people fessed up to what was in their pocketses.  That of course got me to thinking.............

When my dad left home at 16 (he may have been kicked out by the evil step mother.  That part of the story isn't clear), he had a dollar in his pockets.  A silver dollar to be exact.  It was 1936.  He went to live with an aunt who lived nearby.

As long as I can remember, until his death in 1984 he always carried that silver dollar in his pocket.  Oh there were a crap load of other things in there as well.  Watching him empty his pockets was oddly fascinating like watching a woman unload a purse she has carried for a while.  Pocket knife.  Miraculous medal.  Five dollars in loose change.  An odd nut or screw that he would stash later on his workbench.  St. Christopher.  A rubber band.  Bits of string.  One key ring complete with 30+ keys.  And those are just the things I remember.

The silver dollar was the largest item in there.  Easily distinguished by the nearly complete lack of markings on both sides as if it were a slug.  If you skylighted it, you could still make out faint impressions of the eagle on one side and the lady on the other.  The coin had been worn flat by years of rubbing against the weighty contents of his pockets as he moved through his life.

He also collected silver dollars and going through his stuff after the funeral we came across stacks and stacks of these.  The original went with him when we did our Viking send off sans burning boat of course.  I don't know why I think of it this way, but I do.  And if there had been a boat to put him on I might well have lit the torch myself.  Never before or since have I ever thought of someone's funerary preparation as Viking, but this one fit the bill as each of us took our turn to make sure he had what he would need for a happy afterlife in Valhalla.  Driver's License. Credit card. Photos of us.  Hand written notes folded like origami.  Perhaps a snack.  I don't remember the specifics of this just the general feeling of preparing him for the next leg of his journey.  And then he was gone.

In the long weeks that followed there were a lot of things to clean up.  Things that he had collected for years.  Things that represented the essence of who he was.  Discarding those things was among the hardest of tasks.  And there were times that I was unable to do anything more than just stand there numb.  I wanted them to stand forever like little monuments to this person that had passed through the world largely unnoticed.  Wanted to leave it all exactly as he had so that I could lie among them and feel close to him again.  In the end though, it all went somewhere else.

My brothers and I took small reminders or big.  I took a beat up hammer from his workbench.  I didn't know why.  I would gift it to my very handy younger brother Phil 20 years later with a note I wrote on my dad's behalf telling Phil how proud he was of him and it would somehow bring healing to Phil and allow him to see our dad thru different eyes.  Also his mess cup hand, engraved with every destination he served in WWII.  That went to my nephew Josh who had yet to be born but whose military career meant he would appreciate it.  For myself,  I took the bowtie to his Knights of Columbus dress uniform to remind me that people are more than they seem on the outside.  And I took a single silver dollar from the stack so that I could carry it in my own pocket and always remember how wealthy I am.