Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
My late friend Alfred Redman told me a story one afternoon as we sat in a gym waiting for our teams to play each other in a tournament. Alfred was many things: a legendary coach and teacher, a farmer, a leader on and off the reservation, and a veteran.
This is a brief story of Alfred after he had played a couple of years of college football and basketball at Northwest College in Powell.
Al enlisted in the Air Force and caught the train at Bonneville north to Billings, where he had a long layover.
“I don’t like sitting around, so I decided to check out Billings,” Al said. “I walked for a couple of hours and found some change, about 75 cents. It was enough for a couple of beers as I waited for the ride to basic training.”
Prices were much lower in the late 1950s than they are today.
It’s just a little story, but it illustrates how frugal people think, and while Al was a very giving person, he was still frugal.
Many of us have discovered quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies as we walk across parking lots or along country roads. With the low value of the dollar these days, many people won’t bend over to pick up even a quarter. I’m not in that group just yet.
On one of my recent morning walks, I was cutting across the grass above the middle school, dodging early morning sprinklers as the sun came up. Against the bright green grass was another bit of green, this one with Abe Lincoln looking up at me. I’d found a very wet five-dollar bill.
It was just one of many times I’ve found money in the most unlikely places.
I pulled into one of Riverton’s car washes one summer to clean up my truck after a surprise encounter with a wet spot in one of our hayfields. I sank into the mud, put the old girl in 4-wheel drive, and left a pair of ruts I later filled back in with a tractor and blade.
The grass, dirt, and weeds were sprayed all over the truck, with nice slashes along both sides from the spinning front tires.
I pulled into the bay, fished out a few bills for the machine, and discovered a pile of quarters sitting on top of the control box. At least 15 bucks’ worth. My car wash was free that afternoon.
My favorite story of ill-gotten gain (Sounds sinister, doesn’t it?) came as a college kid traveling back to Laramie after an October weekend at home on the farm.
As I hit Muddy Gap, the ominous clouds I’d been watching since the top of Beaver Rim came rolling over the highway. High winds, mixed snow and rain, a traditional Wyoming autumn afternoon.
My 1969 Rambler American was the most gutless car I’ve ever owned. It’s 194 cubic inch, six-cylinder engine cranked out a whopping 90 horsepower. Yes, I was passed going up hills driving I-80 by heavily loaded semi-trucks.
I stomped the accelerator and roared through Lamont and the Bairoil turnoff at warp speed, 71 miles an hour. It was enough to outrun the storm for a few minutes. I didn’t want those conditions on Interstate 80 with my underpowered Rambler.
Pulling into Rawlins I stopped to fill up. The wind in front of the storm caught me. As I turned my head, something slapped me on the side of my face. I snatched it and found a five-dollar bill. Looking west a couple of hundred yards I saw a guy chasing something towards me from another filling station. It was money. I spotted a couple of one-dollar bills go flashing by on the now 45-mile per hour Rawlins breeze and let them go. I had a free fill-up that day.
At an ATM in Houston late one night, I put my debit card in for some cash, and when I looked into the tray as the machine chunked away, I found three 20-dollar bills. Looking right and left, I didn’t see anyone, so I pocketed my treasure and went on my way.
On one of my evening walks a few years ago I was walking south on North 7th Street after turning off of Pershing. Just past the bank, there was a bit of paper sticking out of sand piled up along the sidewalk.
Earlier that day we had a fast-moving thunderstorm that overflowed the gutters in town. The paper had my favorite founding father on it, Benjamin Franklin. Yep, a hundred-dollar bill just walked into my pocket.
When I returned home, I proudly told Sue what I’d found. My wife has fairness ingrained in her genetic structure, maybe it’s all those years teaching kindergarten. Sue’s reaction wasn’t what I expected, “Where did you find it?” she asked.
When I told her she said, “Let’s go, someone is missing that and we need to check houses on that street to see who lost it.”
Ok….
“It’ll probably be the very first house we stop at,” I said.
She realized that no, we weren’t going to get straight answers, so she let it go.
It was the first hundred-dollar bill I ever found.
Yes, I’ve found one more, once again walking, this time around City Park.
It’s intriguing to think about the source of missing money in a place like City Park. Did it fly out the window of some passing tourist’s care unbeknownst to them? Did the wind whip it out of someone’s hand on Main Street, sending it into the park? Or was it something more nefarious? Could it be from a drug deal gone bad, with the criminals involved running away at the sight of a Riverton Police car?
Any of those are possibilities, and of course, many more, but my speculation was brief. I’d found another Ben Franklin and was a happy camper, even though I wasn’t camping in the park.
Keeping your head down is a phrase you often hear in war movies, but it relates to many more aspects of life.
Sometimes it means to just keep quiet and take the garbage being thrown at you. In a hostile workplace, it means don’t rock the boat, don’t be unique, don’t do anything extra, just do your job and get it over with.
But occasionally, keeping your head down gets you looking downward, and sometimes there’s a prize waiting for a keen eye.
My old friend and fellow coach Alfred was on to something. He was often on to things. A great man.