For the sake of any college friends who are reading, this is not about Spare Change, the guy who stood on the corner down on M Street. Though I'm sure he was very familiar with Carlo Rossi, this story takes place about 25 years later.
Today in the Morning New links, Bird Dog led off with an article about spare change. I don't know if Mrs. Bulldog told him the story about our spare change jug, but I know Mrs. Bird Dog heard it. Bird Dog was present in the Mohonk Mountain House parking lot when I picked up a dime, handed it to Mrs. Bulldog and said "Look, 10 Paris."
Spare change has some history in our family. About 11 years ago, I'd had a poker game in my basement and someone brought a jug of Carlo Rossi. You know, the good stuff in the big jug, with the finger handle on the neck.
I was known, in college, for slinging one of those into the crook of my arm, tilting it up, and taking large swigs. That's how we did it back in the Poconos. It is the proper way to drink Carlo. No, the picture is not me. I do have a tie-dye shirt, but no beard.
At any rate, my fellow poker player did a pretty good job on the wine. Then he left the jug behind. As we cleaned up, we decided to wash the jug and put our change in it. It was cheaper than throwing it out, going to a store and buying one to keep our change in. Which is something you can do, apparently. I tend to think if you are throwing something away, there is no reason to then buy whatever it is for some other use. You can buy jugs for change almost anywhere, though.
Now all our change goes into Carlo's little jug. After reading "The City of Falling Angels" the jug became our 'Venice Jug' and if we found a penny, it was a "Venice". Dimes were "10 Venice," and so on. All change counted, and it all went in. Sure enough, when it filled up, we planned our trip to Italy. There was about $300+ in there. It wasn't just loose change. Every now and then if I had a spare single or two, I'd toss that in, too. I think we had about $50 in singles in there, the rest I went through manually, checked for my coin collection (got quite a few good ones), then had the bank count the money. Coinstar is fine, but I don't like giving them 10%. Our bank will count it for free.
That jug is now our 'Paris Jug'. Coins on the ground, are no long a "Venice" but a "Paris". We have a long way to go, though. We don't get as much spare change as we used to. Credit cards pay for most things, since the points and miles take us to our favorite locations. I think credit card miles and points are a modern day version of spare change. If I'm going to spend $x,xxx a month anyway on credit cards, I should get something back for it. We've taken 4 trips on these miles/points. Most of Italy was paid for by the points.
The jug is really just the extra cash we bring along on the trip. It allowed us to give our sons some cash to have fun with. Now that they are grown, we'll find a new use for the cash.
I saw a quarter on the stairs out of the subway this morning. Too many people were rushing up the stairs to pick it up for the jug. Someone else will find a better use for that 25 Paris.
