P. Ferguson image, August 2018.
A Little Bit of Change
It’s not every day that one receives a King George VI Canadian nickel in pocket change, but there it was. Perhaps not unusual, and some would allow it to slip by towards the next cup of coffee, the next biscuit, the next something. But there it sat, with me, so I pondered its age commencing with its emergence on the Canadian scene in 1947.
I suspect it has not always been in circulation, perhaps its been resting in a jar found in a desk, rediscovered but then let go. Perhaps its been lost? Discovered with the trowel that digs at dandelions on our manicured lawns. We can never know, but in my hands, it is a reminder…of the magic of storytelling and how there can always be more.
In 1947 veterans of the Second World War may have been home for two years, maybe more, maybe less. They may of, had a child born in 1939 that they hardly knew after years away or perhaps that child was of younger years, but how many of us recall our fathers, our mothers taking us for ice cream? Its cost in 1947 was five cents…ice cream…a memory perhaps we all have.
My mother, when a girl, used to find these amongst her Canadian change.
(Wiki Image)
Still today’s found coin takes me to another nickel vintage from outside Canada, the Buffalo nickel, that includes a portrait of one of the United States’ first peoples. My mother gathered the few that she found, amongst her Canadian change, when she was a girl. She liked them. There is a small handful of them lurking about, probably in a jar, in a desk, in some drawer.
Maybe one day this, my rediscovered nickel, will find its way into one of those date oriented coin collector books…but then I remember there is also a film…a scene….a reminder to us all of memories, not based on value but based on love.
[Throw Momma from the Train – Owen’s Coin Collection]
Special thanks to Danny DeVito and Billy Crystal.
Previously published Pipes of War website, 2 August 2018