Distinctly Montana Magazine

w w w . d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m 71 You see, the Coinage Act of 1965 was signed into law on July 23rd of that year by President Johnson. The new law eliminated silver from dimes and quarters. I've always been a bit libertarian, I guess, but to my 13-year-old mind it made the newly minted coins little more than slugs. And I confess that it still amazes me that all the Treasury has to do is write, "this note is legal tender, for all debts, public, and private," and we think that it's worth something. That having been said, I wouldn't want you to get me wrong. I love money, which is why I hoarded the silver dimes. I reckoned that their value in metal would someday exceed their value as currency. I was right, too—if I had those today, I'd be able to eat a steak and wash it down with a big tumbler of Johnnie Walker every night for the next six months or so. Hell, maybe I could even drink something that ain't blended, although that might shave a month off. Because, as you might have inferred, I never got to make any money from those hidden coffee cans full of loot, because my delightful brother, the little blessing, sold the lot of them for comic books, candy bars, and bottles of soda. I went ballistic, nearly to orbit, when I came home from college to discover the whole kit and caboodle gone. No coins, no sapphires. Evidently, he sold the sapphires in a single transac- tion, getting $20 from a local jeweler for the lot. The dimes, however, went in sticky little handfuls to the corner store, where he bought his ill-gotten sweets. He must have thought I wouldn't notice if a few went missing here and there, but over my fresh- man and sophomore years of college I guess the little monster developed quite an appetite. I came home to a sad scattering of tarnished coins left out of the thousands I'd had. My first thought was of going back and at least getting the sapphires back, but he sold them almost as soon as I'd left. And without the boy coughing up all the sugar he'd imbibed in a year or two, we couldn't return it to the store for a refund, I wasn't going to get those dimes back, either. So really, the only recourse for me was to punish the little brother and relish it. When I was seven and he was two, I could have tortured him. When I was fifteen and he was ten, sure. But at 19 and 13, the fun had gone out of it for me. I tried a half-nelson or two, a light punch, and that old standby the Dutch rub, but I failed to derive any pleasure in his pain. I suppose you could say I was growing up. Full-Service CRE Brokerage | Buy Sell Lease Invest Site Selection 1031 Bozeman | Missoula | Kalispell | Great Falls | Billings | Helena | Bue | Hamilton www.SterlingCREadvisors.com | 406-289-0683 | info@SterlingCREadvisors.com

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