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Kansas City Irish Festivals, Music, Pubs, & Events by an Artist in Ireland

Finding Money

You know that old joke? About the Irish man emigrating to America because he hears the streets there are paved with gold, and when he arrives he sees a gold coin on the ground, bends over to pick it up, but stops himself at the last moment saying, ah no, sure I’ll start tomorrow.

Well that only applies to New York. Or American cities where people walk. The streets of the cities in the middle of America are not paved with gold at all. They are paved with asphalt. But the streets of Ireland are different. They are paved with silver. And money.

Just over 3 years ago I found a 10-dollar note in Overland Park, Kansas. Almost 5 years in the country, it was the first time I found money over the value of 25 cents. My first note to find.

3 years later I found my 2nd note. A 5-dollar bill on the Missouri side, in Waldo. And weeks later, yesterday in fact, I found a 10-dollar note, also in Waldo. While 25 dollars is a nice bit of dosh, it’s a terrible return for 8 years of wandering the streets looking for money. And I look for money every day. That’s 2,877 days in America that I have looked on the streets for money, finding it only on 3 of those days.

All 3 notes were of course found in car-parks. So walking the streets looking for money was always a flawed plan for a city where people don’t walk, let alone don’t drop money where they’re not walking.

Oh I know some people walk around 39th and Main, but they don’t have any money to drop. They’re hoping you do. And some of them are hoping to pick it up before you get around to dropping it. And people pick up bus tickets there, which isn’t money until you can persuade somebody in need of a bus ticket to give you 80% of its value in cash. It’s illegal folks but if you want to save cents on a bus ticket I suggest you drive to midtown, park your car without dropping any money, and start haggling.

By comparison, in any 8-year period in Dublin I have found hundreds of Irish pounds. And presumably when I return to Dublin, over the next 8 years I will find hundreds of euros multiplied by a factor of 1.26973808. Because otherwise I’m getting diddled.

Finding this money in Ireland does involve work though. You walk a lot. And predictably, you look down. You do not be distracted by the social beings who wish to converse with you. You avoid eye contact. You learn to walk slower as you pass little heaps of dirt brushed there by either God or by an employee of the city who is expecting a street cleaning vehicle in the next week.

You walk along the kerbs. And you walk even slower as you pass public bins, especially those at bus-stops. People rushing for buses have a habit of throwing away money before they board. It’s a wonderful economic system of sharing that you can be the beneficiary of if you learn the discipline to not rush for the bus yourself.

Although you may think looking everywhere for money may leave you socially dysfunctional, on the contrary it gives you all kinds of social skills. Once on Dame Street in Dublin I watched a man walking haphazardly but roughly towards me. He was picking things up off the ground. He passed me and went up Trinity Street criss-crossing as he went after his targets which ultimately led him back to me.

-I’m picking up silver paper. Everybody thinks I’m mad. I think I’m mad. Do you think I’m mad?
-No.
-You don’t?
-No, you’re just not very good at it, I replied pointing out several pieces I could see on the ground. And then I picked up a couple of pieces for him.

A final word of warning though. Finding money is not always a good thing - and I’m not referring to the Law of Spending 3 Times The Value of What You find .

In 1991 Down won the All-Ireland final in Gaelic football - beating the evil men from Meath, and all of Ireland, not just Ulster, cheered. A year later my county, a complacent Dublin, was beaten in the final by Donegal making it two All-Ireland titles in a row for the province of Ulster.

The following year, 1993, I was at Croke Park cheering on my county yet again when another Ulster county - Derry - in an epic game, beat Dublin in the semi-final by just a single point. Roll on the clock a year and I’m back at GAA headquarters and so are Dublin. This time the oppostion is Down. It rained even more than it did the previous year. Down scored a goal under our Hill 16 nose and the great Charlie Redmond missed yet another penalty for Dublin at the Canal End. Dublin lost.

In my Dublin jersey in the rain I walked the streets of north inner-city Dublin to friends who lived near by. There would be tea there. And I didn’t want to go home now anyway, after watching us lose yet another All-Ireland.

Before reaching my friends’ door and pressing the bell, I peeled a five pound note off a soaking wet street somewhere in Drumcondra. A girl I didn’t know opened the door.

I stood before her, outside in the rain, drenched through to the skin, hair, eye-brows and nose all dripping, and wearing my Dublin jersey with the look of somebody who had lost an All-Ireland and found a fiver. In an attempt at hospitality that only left me thinking of what I’d like to do to her Canal End, she beckoned me in with the last words I ever heard her speak:
-Oh, you’ve been at the game! Isn’t it great to see another Ulster county win the All-Ireland?

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 7th, 2007 at 3:22 am and is filed under 1-eolai, Ireland & USA: Differences, Sport. You can follow responses via my RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.