SHORT STORY: The Lucky Dime
Two crisp dollar bills went into the machine. Two quarters, a nickel, a soda and a tarnished dime came out.
John held the dime in his palm and adjusted his glasses.
“196…,” he mumbled under his breath and then looked at the ridges. It wasn’t a 1960-1964 dime — the edge would be silver. Instead it was nickel plated onto copper. That change came in 1965.
It was a 1965 D. D standing for Denver. This particular dime had 1,652,140,000 brothers and sisters. In the battered condition it was in, it was worth a dime.
“I wonder what kind of stories you could tell?” John said as he slid the coin into his pocket.
In 1965, the newly minted dime was deposited at First Bank & Trust in Rahway, New Jersey. There is was given to a solider from Fort Dix, New Jersey. The solider pocketed the coin and used in the next week while making a phone call to his girlfriend in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He told her that he was being sent to Vietnam the very next week. The dime sat in the phone for a week until it was emptied. The phone company deposited it back in the bank where it was given to an elderly man who was cashing his retirement check. He took the dime and used it to buy a drink out of a soda machine.
1966 found the dime being given to a child as a gift by an uncle. The little boy dropped the dime in a offering plate at First Methodist Church of Richmond, Virginia. The pastor cashed a dollar out of the collection plate and used the dime to pay for lunch at the local diner. A waitress pocketed the dime and then gave it back as change to another man. That man was from San Diego, California. The coin rode first class on a Boeing 707.
1967 came and the dime was still sitting in a change jar. The man grabbed a handful of change and used the dime to make a wish in a public fountain. The coin, cold and wet, wondered if this would be the end for him. But he was soon scooped up and handed over to a local soup kitchen. The director used the dime to pay a local Marine for his help at the kitchen. The Marine packed it in his sack and soon was on his way to Vietnam.
The dime had never felt anything like the heat and humidity in Saigon. The Marine said it was his lucky dime. He’d use it to flip to make decisions about combat. One day, the odds went against the Marine. His buddies went through his personal effects and his best friend pocketed the dime at as his friend’s flag-draped coffin was loaded on the C-141 bound for home.
His friend carried the dime everyday until 1985. He was walking into a tall office building in Atlanta, Georgia when his left arm went numb. At the funeral, his son went through his pockets and found the dime. “Funny they forgot this, ” he said as he put it in his own pocket. He used it later that day (with a few more coins) to buy a beer.
The bartender looked at the beaten up dime and pulled it aside. “Bet you have a story to you.” Just then, two men in ski masks robbed the bar and shot the bartender. While he survived, the dime did not stay with him. The men grabbed all the money they could and ran out the door. The dime was later used in a parking meter off of Peachtree Street.
The man emptying that meter accidentally dropped the dime. It sat in the grass for five years until a sharp-eyed little boy noticed it. It was 1991. The dime was headed to Knoxville Tennessee.
In Knoxville, the little boy used the dime in a vending machine and got a pack of Peanut M&M’s. From there it went to the bank, to a blind customer, to a restaurant owner and then to a sock full of coins. There the dime sat for another decade until the man who owned the sock cashed his coins out to buy a bottle of Jack Daniels.
The dime left the liquor store into the hands of an elderly woman. She took the coin and used it to buy gas for her Buick Regal. The gas station attendant dropped it and it rolled under the counter. There it sat for three years.
A janitor noticed the coin and pocketed it. “Finally, a raise,” he thought. He spent the dime as part of his payment for a sno-cone in Gatlinburg. There it was given to a tourist from Jackson, Mississippi as a change. The dime was headed South. It ended up in another change drawer. And then, in 2015, was used to buy a Diet Mountain Dew in a vending machine. It dropped out of the slot, tired and beat up. And it fell right into John’s hands.
“Funny,” he said as he looked at it. “My grandmother said my grandfather had a lucky dime just like you in Vietnam. I think I’ll make you mine.” And with that, the lucky dime finally come home.