Organization

I was watching a customer fiddling with her money the other day and had a flashback to my childhood. I remember being at a toy store buying something. Dad was with me and I think this was probably one of the first times I had bought something with my own money - probably when Mom and Dad were initially trying to teach us good spending habits.

When I was putting away the change Dad told me that he likes to organize his bills by denomination - 20's behind 10's, 10's behind 5's, etc. He seemed to think that this was important, that it would save time in the long run. I remember thinking at the time,

I don't have time for that! Where are your priorities - there are Lego's to play with!

Well, I don't know how it happened, but years later I'm that guy holding up the line at Safeway putting my money away.

Thanks Dad. Now if I would just have the same attitude towards the rest of my life I could walk to my bed without stubbing my toes and tripping on stuff.

Whiskey bottles and six-year olds

I haven't had internet access lately, so I haven't posted much. I have a few minutes left of coffee-shop wireless, so I think I'll just post a cool story I heard from my Grandpa Ehli.

When he was growing up during Prohibition he would collect old bottles that he found at the side of the road. Him and his friends sold them to a local moonshiner. He’d pay a nickel per whiskey bottle or a dime if it came with a cork. They had to scrounge quite a while just to get a few, but you could buy a lot of pop with a nickel in those days. Then one day prohibition ended and there were more whiskey bottles lying around than they could carry. Unfortunately the moonshiner wouldn’t buy them anymore. But Grandpa and his friends all thought that someday someone would be buying them again. So they gathered all that they could and dug a big hole. They made a spot on top for the grain-door off of an old railcar and put that on top. Then they covered that with about 2 feet of dirt and made a map.

I sincerely hope that someday, hundreds of years from now, an archaeologist in South Dakota digs that up and gets thoroughly confused.