Saturday, August 18, 2018

SHE SHOULD HAVE JUST GIVEN ME CARDS

I had this girlfriend that used to give me a silver dollar for every month we made it. I didn't really realize how weird that was until just now.
Twenty two shining silver dollars I kept in a Sir Walter Raleigh can.
I remember when I got married a couple years later, and my bride asked me where I got all the silver dollars.
I lied.
I told her about how my grandfather had been a bank robber. He was the most famous bank robber in the whole country outside of Bonnie and Clyde. He operated between Detroit, Chicago, Erie Pennsylvania, up through Buffalo and Niagara hitting all the major financial institutions, and occasionally riding in a barrel over the falls. Grandfather was a daredevil. Over the years he probably robbed a hundred banks, they say, and never got caught, do tell. He settled in Texas down around Lufkin way, bought 60 acres of land did a little wildcattin’. Struck oil back around 1936. Anyway the way the laws worked the paper currency he stole wasn't as big a problem as the silver coin. So he buried the silver dollars on his property in Sir Walter Raleigh cans. Leastways that was the story . When I was little boy and my cousin Mark and I would go down there, he and his buddies would be in the barn, cigarette smoke and the soft smell of whiskey in the air, and playing dominoes, 42 mostly. To get rid of us he'd send us out with a shovel looking to dig up a Sir Walter can full of silver dollars. One day me and my cousin dug up two rusty cans full of silver dollars. We had not really believed him until then. He died the next year. We sure did a lot of digging after that never to find another rusty can full of silver dollars.
That's what I told her.
Then she clobbered me.

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