The Coin Of The Realm

We called five-cent pieces nickels. They weren't made just of nickel. They were an alloy of some sort. The formula eludes me. If I had a nickel, I had a passport.

It was a respectable coin. A nickel could buy a cup of coffee or a beer. It could buy a hot dog. You could buy a newspaper with a nickel and get two cents change. How <@145>bout a cigar? Or a can of soup? Carrots, celery and Fels-Naptha soap and salt and baking-soda cost a nickel. Five cents bought an ice-cream cone or a soda-pop. A nickel's worth of candy could spoil the appetite for dinner. And of course the coin of the realm bought apples, the symbol of our condition being better to give us rosey cheeks or worse because we were in hard times.

Nickels in circulation came in three styles. The new ones featured Thomas Jefferson's visage on the obverse. He was an important American and we were encouraged to follow his example. I never saw any men in a hair-do like his. Hair styles are always evolving and Jefferson and his lot probably viewed the Kings of France in their greasy curls as sissies. I thought Jefferson looked like Peggy Delia with muscles. The Jefferson age returned in the eighties when boys started wearing "tails" again. Jefferson's house is featured on the back. During the war, copper was needed for defense and copper content in nickels was replaced by silver. It cost seven cents to make a nickel.

There were a lot of Buffalo nickels in circulation. The Indian who posed for the relief that graced the obverse looked grumpy. White men look that way when they are constipated. The expression on the Indian's face reflected a) what the white man had reduced him to or b) the actual model knowing he was getting stiffed for his pose. The government's tribute to Native Americans should have been a twenty-four dollar bill which was the screwing price for Manhattan. On the front the engraver could depict a large group of grumpy, constipated indians and on the other side show the toothy-grinned fathers of our civilization who ambushed the indians.

There was another theory about why the indian looked so miserable. Older kids showed us the truth.

"Take a nickel and hold your thumbnail against the indian's nose. Place the end of your first finger at the same spot on the reverse. Turn the nickel over holding the thumb and your finger in that grip."

The indian is smelling the buffalo's hinie. Ugh!

Now and then Liberty nickels found their way to change. They weren't rare, just not so common because they were out of production for a while. The profile of goddess Liberty was ringed with stars emulating a secular immaculate conception. Lady Liberty appeared on other coins as well, sometimes seated in imperial majesty. The reverse announced its worth with the impression of a Roman five and these coins were sometimes called "v" nickels. Their stamping ceased in 1913 when, it is rumored only that five were minted and if you found one you never would have to work again. Collectors would kill all of their relatives to own one. We heard one was supposed to be at the bottom of The East River near the Brooklyn Bridge. Brooklyn was far away from the known world.

Pepsi-Cola hits the spot.
Twelve full ounces, that's a lot.
Twice as much for a nickel, too.
Pepsi-Cola is the drink for you.
nickel, nickel, nickel, nickel, nickel, nickel....

If you bought a nickel bottle of Pepsi, or any other pop, and took it home you paid an extra two-cents as a deposit. But the rich and lazy and others were likely to throw the empties away. Soda-pop and beer bottles found in trash-cans or vacant lots or other places where unthoughtful people had tossed them were worth money to kids: two cents for six or eight or twelve ounce empties, a nickel for quart bottles.

Coins are minted by hundreds of millions. It seems impossible that at some later time the one you hold may be re-assessed as priceless. Buffalo nickels co-existed with Jeffersons for about fifteen years before nouveau-collectors emerged to hoarde them away. Later, the first year's entire production of Kennedy half-dollars, four hundred million disappeared within the hour of their circulation. They sit in cigar-boxes and nail-kegs and safety deposit boxes and other hideaways. But then, the half-dollar piece was never the coin of the realm. Like the two-dollar bill, it was too complicated. Earlier ones, Barbers and standing Liberties, weren't hidden away in boxes and jars with same compulsion that sent JFK's memorial edition out of any thought of use for spending. Hoarding redefined collecting and all the silver coins would disappear except the seven-cent nickel.

F.W. Woolworth collected nickels. His stores were called "Five and Tens" and for a long time your nickel could buy any of a zillion items on his counters at the five and ten. The nickels were trucked off to New York and F.W. erected one of the great buildings of the world on a foundation of the coin of the realm.

Nostalgic memories belong to older folks. Men still talk of nickel beers. Women remember the Automat where food sat behind windows that were opened by nickels passed through slots. Ex-kids have wider appreciation. If they had a nickel they had a passport.

Our position in the economy was not embarrassed by small change.