Posted by Short Story on June 22, 2008, 9:03 am
Board Administrator
The Old Quarter
By
Lonnie Ratliff
I guess your first car is a big event for everyone and I was surely no exception to that rule. When you are the oldest of seven kids in Pushmataha County, Oklahoma in 1965 it is not one of those automatic things where when you turn 16 years old a new red Mustang convertible shows up in the driveway. I never had any trouble understanding the reality of my situation and was comfortable with the fact that if I wanted a car I would have to figure out some way to buy it on my own.
Also if you lived in rural Pushmataha County you knew there was not many ways to make money especially for teenagers and especially not enough money to buy a car. I was telling my Grandpa Ratliff about my predicament which was mostly just me thinking out loud because I knew there was nothing he could do about it and I was not even thinking that he might. Grandpa and Grandma Ratliff lived on their old age pension check and as everyone in Southeast Oklahoma would say, they were as poor as old Job’s turkey. I don’t think I even thought my Grandpa was listening to me but when I got through with my sad tale he said come here Lonnie Carl. The use of my middle name meant it was either important or I was in a whole lot of trouble. Since I had done nothing to get in trouble for I got up off the porch steps and walked over to his rocking chair wondering what he had in mind. He dug in his pocket and pulled out an old quarter unlike anything I had ever seen. He said isn’t one of your friends at school a coin collector ? I told him yes that Jimmy Maple collected old coins and he had bought a couple of Indian head pennies from me a week or so before. I guess my Grandpa listened to me a lot more than I ever thought he did because he had remembered that. He said why don’t you see if that old quarter is worth anything and if it is you can sell it to him and use the money to help buy you a car. I knew this was a pretty heavy duty moment in both our lives even though I was only sixteen years old and not quite sure how to handle the situation. I am thankful that I was well mannered enough to tell him I better not take his old quarter because I knew he had carried it around for years and it was probably pretty important to him. He didn’t go into any long drawn out explanations but just said no Lonnie I want you to have it or I wouldn’t have offered it to you so go see if you can figure out a way to get you a car from it. About 30 years later I finally figured out why I think he did it and I am glad now he got to share in that first old car that neither one of us could afford.
The old quarter was an 1896 S mint which meant on top of being old it was also very rare as it was minted at the San Francisco Mint which only minted a few of these coins. I had a coin collector’s book that was a couple of years old Jimmy Maple had given me but I knew it would at least give me a general idea of what Grandpa’s old quarter was worth. When we got back home I dug out the coin book and checked to see what the quarter was worth. I was quite pleased to see that at the time of the coin book’s printing it was worth about $16 so I knew it would be worth at least that much since it was now a couple of years older. I knew Jimmy would buy it and that he would have the money because his father owned the Chevrolet dealership there in Antlers, Oklahoma and they were a pretty well to do family. I also knew that my buddy Bobby Satterfield had parked his old 1948 Ford sedan out under a tree last fall when he had gotten a better car and he had told me he would sell it to me for $17.50 . It was looking like I was going to end up with my first car thanks to Grandpa Ratliff’s old quarter so I couldn’t wait for the weekend to be over and I could move forward with my plan.
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