My "special" collection

[villa66]

A couple of Sundays ago I spent some time with what I call my “Special” collection, the numismatic odds and ends that don’t have a place in my collection, but about which I’m too sentimental to give up. Here is the story of one of them.

For several years when I was a boy we lived in Oklahoma near a medium-size university town, not far from its municipal airport, in a small subdivision half-full of mostly new homes.

Among other things—like its wind—Oklahoma is known for its red clay soil. Getting the typical American grass lawn to grow there is often tough, so unless there is a good reason to make the effort, it’s usually best to leave the soil and the plants to their natural forms.

That’s the way it was across the street from us—natural. No houses had been built there yet. It was straight red clay with scattered patches of scrub yellow-clover.

One late afternoon in 1964 my parents sent my sister and me outside to play. (The year is easy to remember because of the “All the way with LBJ” signs that were in the yards for the Johnson vs. Goldwater presidential election that autumn.)

So my six-year-old sister and I (at age 7) were in the vacant land across the street from our house, playing chase. It was my turn to try to catch her so I was chasing her, running hard. Suddenly—all at once, seeming out of nowhere—an image of the Liberty Bell was in my mind. I chased my sister for two or three seconds more, but then slowed, and then stopped. The Liberty Bell?

I backtracked, retracing my steps, carefully looking at the ground. Five or ten meters back, there it was on the red clay ground, in between the patches of yellow clover, its silver surface black from exposure:

[villa66]

I was still about a month away from becoming a coin collector, so I hadn’t been thinking “Franklin Half.” No, what I had been thinking was “Liberty Bell.”

So I picked the big coin up from the ground and turned it over:

[villa66]

Time, of course, has dulled the coin’s colors. The intervening half century (it has been almost a full 50 years since I first touched this half-dollar!) has softened the blackness of the Liberty Bell reverse, and the red clay that was clinging to Franklin’s portrait and in between parts of the legend…well, all that red has now gone nearly grey. But there it is, still. I never did clean this coin.

Fifty cents was a large sum for a kid then and for about a month I thought about how I would spend it. But then a Philippine 1-centavo appeared and made me a coin collector. So I never did spend this half-dollar.

I think I’ll take it to our family get-together for Easter, and show it to my sister.

v.

[sigistenz]

That is a nice story. BTW I just finished Steinbeck's GRAPES OF WRATH. But of course your coin is later.
Integrated in my collection there are 6 or 7 coins each of which makes me remember some passed away collector friend
Sigi

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[sigistenz]

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[Sebastian D.]

Hi villa66, thanks for sharing the story about this special coin.

[villa66]

Maybe the best thanks for the kind comments is to continue....

v.

[villa66]

The newest member of my “special” collection is also, paradoxically, one of the very oldest. Dad brought this AFSOUTH military badge home from the NATO base in Bagnoli one night in 1968 and gave it to me.

Not being money, of course, it never had a chance of being in my coin collection, but it was a beautiful thing and it had a close connection to our family history, so I was careful not to lose it. Later on, when I created my “special” collection, this red and gold beauty was one of its founding members.

Funny thing is, sometime in the late-‘80s Pop—who had assembled a display of the military medals that had figured in his career—mentioned that he had been able to include a blue and silver AIRSOUTH (Allied Air Forces Southern Europe) badge in his display, for some reason he had failed to bring back a red and gold AFSOUTH (Allied Forces Southern Europe) badge.

Anybody who has ever been a collector of, well, anything, knows the internal war that followed , but heck, he was my Dad. So Pop got back this AFSOUTH badge and was surprised and happy to see it.

Time is never stopped for long, though. AFSOUTH is now a creature of the past, as is (or soon will be?) the NATO installation at Bagnoli. Worst of all, my father no longer owns this red and gold beauty, and hasn’t, not for many years.

If enough time can pass, though, grief often loses its sharper edges. And recently my mother and I were looking through a jewelry box Pop had left behind those years ago. Watches, rings—all kinds of small personal trinkets were there. What a lot of stories big and small there were. And near the bottom of the box was this little red and gold badge that Pop and I had passed back and forth over the decades.

So it’s mine again. I wish it wasn’t. But here it’s prologue, for the next item in my “special” collection....