132. The Dime

            Change isn’t worth much these days. You can no longer buy much for less than a dollar. With the current climate and the ensuing economic downturn that we are soon to experience from this Covid-19 scare that might turn around. But even if it doesn’t I think most Americans hang on to their change as much for the symbolic value as the buying power.

            There is no doubt that we love Abraham Lincoln and we cling to his copper presence in our pockets. We all know the phrase, “Brother, can you spare a dime?” while most of us probably don’t fully understand the significance beyond the possibility of it buying a little food, which was obviously true. Of course the other significance, and why it was used so often, was because it was the price of a call at the pay phone (yes, for those of us who remember, we might be thinking it was a quarter, but it never went that high back east where it stayed a dime for a long time). It was also the rallying cry behind the Roosevelt campaign to research and finally eradicate polio. It worked. There are very few people now who can even begin to understand the ravages that that disease wrought upon this nation and the world. There are probably no people left who can begin to understand the agony that that disease presented to our longest serving president, even though now they believe he may not have had polio at all. That is, in fact, why his image is stamped on the dime, that is why we have the March of Dimes. Certainly the campaign was largely because of his wife, Eleanor, and it could be easily debated whether perhaps her image should be stamped on the dime. There is no doubt a certain love and respect from her remains indelibly etched in his image from her complicated love for the man whose image IS stamped on our dime.

            After an afternoon run I was walking my cooldown and I saw Mr. Roosevelt’s image sparkling on the ground. Of course I’m old enough to understand the value of pocket change so I picked it up.  That little act got me ruminating on the significance of the dime, the effort that our nation gave in its darkest hour to combat an incomprehensible disease, that effort that we must now give to put a stop to another incomprehensible disease. I’m still carrying that dime in my pocket and I don’t think I’ll spend that one. I think I’ll hold on to it as my little Ebenezer of hope, my little symbol of pride, my little reason to remember that as the time comes I will be that brother to spare a dime. On second thought, pocket change still has great value.