August 8th is National Dollar Day. This commemorates the day Congress established the US monetary system in 1786. Congress had stated currency would be the dollar. Coin would be certain metalic sizes and percents: gold pieces $10; silver $1; and smaller silver 1/10 of $1; and copper 1/100 $1.
To honor the dollar, I have a paperweight of one dollar bills from my Grandfather. It is from Midwest National Bank of Lake Forest.
I also have a picture of my grandfather counting out $100 bills from the mid 1930’s. I believe he was working at the Waukegan bank.
On the topic of banks, I have an unusual banking book “The Theory and History of Banking” by Charles F. Dunbar, published in 1922. (still with dust jacket!). There is a chapter on the Federal Reserve Banking Business.
While I could just read about the Federal Reserve Bank, I had a friend that worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Another friend and I were in the city, and on a whim we thought we would drop in on him-we had never tried before. Security stopped us at the front door. Eventually a message got up to him, and he came down with a puzzled look on his face. Surprise!
After the shock of seeing us, he did give us a quick tour of the building, and lunch in their cafeteria. During the walk, I saw several pallets of boxes being moved around on a lower floor. I asked what were they, and he said “Oh, Those are just $20 bills being transfered to various banks.” When I asked how much money was on one of those pallets, he answered “Would you like to see a million dollars?”
Of course we did. So he took us next door to the Federal Reserve Bank Money Museum. There we saw a 2000 pound cube of $1,000,000 in ones.
Then a dome covered pile of $1,000,000 in twenties.
Finally we saw $1,000,000 in one hundreds.
It was all under lock and key, I couldn’t remove any. While I don’t have a lot of dollars floating around, I do have a small collection of notes from around the world. Some of the countries are Egypt, Italy, France, China, Japan, Canada, Argentina, and Honduras.
They are probably not worth much in American dollars, but they are interesting to look at.
One last note, August 8th is International Cat Day. I do have a book that I have had for a long time that states my beliefs about cats. It is “The Official I Hate Cats Book” by Skip Morrow, 1980.
The author quotes “For every cat lover there is at least one cat hater-perhaps two.”
Truth be known, while I prefer dogs to cats, both of my children have in the past have each gifted my wife and I, a kitten that they could not keep in their apartments. We had Pierre for 19 years and Kitty for 18 years (Kitty just passed away, and we had a funeral and burial with the grandkids present. They wrote cards that we placed in the box.) When Kitty was sick, we took her with us when RVing to Florida. We did all have a good time.
“Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are God. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are God.” – Christopher Hitchens
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