Urban Treasure Hunt
You know what I found over the weekend? Of course you don’t - RSS feeds aren’t that advanced.
You know the way I look for money on the streets that nobody drops on the walks they don’t take? And that’s why I don’t find paper money. And by no money I mean $25, a very poor return for eight years of looking.
Well I have of course found more. When I lived in midtown I always used to deliberately not pick up coins I would find. It wasn’t that I was a snob - I recall once in Liverpool using all of my will power to not pick a two pence piece out of a urinal; we’re talking sterling remember - no, I wasn’t above picking money off the ground, I just thought I’d share the wealth.
When we were kids, and I’ll admit a penny was worth more then than whatever currency you’re using today is worth, but all it would buy would be a penny toffee, or a couple of sweets. Still, finding a coin on the ground caused great excitement and the finder and an escort of friends would all dash to the shops to spend the find and share the goods.
So all grown up in America, where the streets are paved with gold as opposed to the streets I grew up on in Ireland which are paved with chewing gum, I decided to leave all the coins I found exactly where they lay, so some kid could find them. If I picked the coins up I’d only be depriving the world of excited children. So pennies, dimes, nickels, even quarters, were all left grounded.
A while later I found myself going through a spell of visiting a particular midtown park every day with the dog. There was a football pitch there, American football of course, but me and the dog would play gaelic football. We’d play with a tennis ball though, because the dog only has small paws.
One day the dog, being American, called Time Out, and gestured to show me something. Being Irish I carried on soloing the ball before scoring a lovely point and telling the dog once again that there ano such things as Time Outs in gaelic games. Or soccer for that matter.
What the dog showed me was three pennies. On the pitch. Leave them, I said, that will be so cool for some kid to find. This scene played out every day for nearly a month. The dog would make an awkward letter T with its front legs, and I would become Brian Mullins and run straight at the goal before turning into Kevin Moran and kicking the ball wide. Then the dog would then show me a new spot with a number of coins, all pennies, and all there a long time.
When the month was up enough people had seen us playing together that some were even sending filmscripts to Penny Marshall about us, but that was probably down to their own failed relationships with their own dogs rather than any great understanding of gaelic football. Still, I figured it was time to move on and find a new park.
Before doing so though I walked the pitch all over checking all the spots the dog had showed me where coins lay, mostly baked into the dirt. All the coins remained there. Now this is midtown remember; we were not the only people to visit this park. In the early summer evenings I often drove and cycled through there and there was usually a crowd of people there, including many kids.
So that night I wondered why the kids of Kansas City didn’t pick up coins, and it was hard not to conclude that the money was so little they didn’t care for it. I have seen several instances of different kids picking up coins here, to be fair, but on every single one of those occasions the kid then gave the coin to me saying they didn’t want it. Of course I always accepted for it was my role to show them that money, whatever its value, is worth something. Or maybe the kids were dropping coins to provide excitement in my life.
Whatever the reason, that night I resolved to go back to the midtown park one last time and pick up and keep every coin I could find, and to never again, for as long as I lived in America, step over a coin. So I have a large mug of the filthiest, dull, mishapen, burnt, deformed, and even shiny, coins. And the plan is to one day buy myself something special with that money, money from the streets, and tell myself that’s when I turned a corner.
But do you know what I found over the weekend? On the ground? A coin. I thought it was a penny (but not Penny Marshall) as I bent down to pick it up. But it wasn’t. It was a coin not American.
Now you know how difficult it is to deal with foreign currency in this part of America? In fact even talking about foreign currency in this part of America can wreak havoc.
Well on the ground in Kansas City I found a two-cent piece, two cents of a Euro that is, grubby and worn, but still bearing on the back of the mark of the particular country in the EuroZone it came from. On the back where I thought I would see Lincoln, was a harp. I had found an Irish European coin, if you know what I mean
And no, it wasn’t mine to begin with. Trust me I know that patch of ground intimately; I search it all the time. And I don’t go around with euros in my pockets. I don’t even go around with dollars in my pockets.
Anyway, this long-winded story is my way of saying that Kansas City can surprise you, that it can, from time to time, do an impression of a real city, with urban goings on and coins on the ground, waiting for passing grown-ups to find them, and get excited.
At least, that’s my two cents worth.
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