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This week's column

"The times, they are a-changin'," Bob Dylan once wrote and kinda sung.
He doesn't know the half of it.

In coffee cans, candy jars and small cardboard boxes, I have saved a large fortune in small change (a few hundred dollars' worth anyway). Tiny mountains of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters have sat there over the years, some dating back to the heyday of disco and cuffed bell-bottoms.

I knew not from whence they came, but the coins just kept on piling up, not earning one iota of interest.

So I decided one day to cash in my vast reserves and began to sort the change in rolls by hand. That didn't last long.
Then, about nine years ago, I received one of those battery-powered change-sorters for Christmas (for the man who has everything). A little time, I figured, a couple of "D" batteries and I'm on my way to instant wealth.

The premise: You feed the coins into a hole at the top and the machine instantly funnels them into appropriately sized plastic tubes. You then slide a change roll into each full tube and voila!
The reality: Sometimes dimes tumble into the pennies tube. Sometimes the machine jams or chokes if you feed it too much change at once. The pennies tube fills much more quickly than the others and tends to overflow if you don't pay strict attention.

After practice, concentration and a few choice cuss words, I generally mastered the contraption and began rolling pennies, nickels and quarters like a madman. For about three days.
Then I'd tend to the change when I was bored, meaning when there was absolutely, positively nothing else to do.

So, instead of just cans, boxes and jars full of change, I amassed cans, boxes and jars full of change, plus several dozen rolls of change.
Clinton won two terms. "The X Files" swaggered in and staggered out (the truth never was really out there). Regis finally was emancipated from Kathie Lee.

Then came the perfect solution for guys like me. Soda machine-sized devices that would count your change and spit out a receipt that you could cash in at the checkout counter.

The only catch: They charged you for the service. No way.
Tony Soprano took gangsta rap back to its roots. SUVs grew bigger than buses.

About a month ago I revisited Fort Knox and grittily determined that this ends here and now. I deposited more change into receptacles. I rolled more coins. It sat there still.

George W. Bush became president. Janet Jackson bared her soul.
Then more banks began to open on Saturdays, including my own.
Aha. I devised a brilliant plan: I would deposit the coins in small increments at the Friendly Center Wachovia on Saturday mornings. I'd stroll in, cheerily hand the rolls to a smiling teller and be on my way.

Unbeknownst to me, people in Greensboro still prefer banking in person, especially on Saturday mornings. The line typically stretches to the door. The first time I made a visit I came in unshaven wearing my running clothes. I had expected to slip in and slip out, quietly. I was mistaken.

As I waited in a line that rivaled the DMV's, I saw friends, friends of friends, acquaintances and even co-workers.

"Uh, on my way to run," I'd explain, standing there, stubble-faced, holding a heavy plastic bag full of rolled change.

Change, by the way, is heavy. You can hurt someone with a few dollars' worth of pennies.

I have vowed never to go to the bank right before closing at noon. Confronting a bank teller with a couple hundred dollars in change, 30 seconds before closing, is cruel and unusual punishment, if ever there was. But I have done that at least twice. Last week I was the very last customer in line.

The tellers were pleasant and patient on the outside. Lord knows what they were thinking on the inside.

Anyway, this is my weekend ritual and I'm sticking to it, until either my resolve or my pennies and nickels run out.
Sometimes it's an inconvenience, but I'm a firm believer in staying the course, even if it means standing in line.

Recently, a customer seemed to take forever with one teller as I fidgeted in line and nervously cradled my bag o' hard currency for fear it would burst and rain pennies all over the floor.

I stood tiptoed and peered over the counter. Some woman was exchanging rolled coins for paper.
The nerve.

Posted by Allen Johnson on July 31, 2005 3:22 AM | Permalink

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Thinking Out Loud

Thinking Out Loud

This week's column

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