By Phil Roberts
As nice as it sounded, walking and hearing silver dollars clanking in your Levi’s pocket used to have a few down sides. I’m old enough to remember when they automatically came back as change if you bought $2-3 dollars’ worth of something with a $5 bill—or even a $10.
I thought the whole world used silver dollars—never saw a $1 bill with George printed on the paper. If it wasn’t “hard cash” with Lady Liberty on It, could it be real money?
Some numismatist out there may know the real answer, but I used to hear that Wyoming banks could request silver dollars from the U. S, Mint in those days—the 1950s or so—apparently because of their appeal to the tourists’ allusions of the “Old West.”
Towns had their share of “Silver Dollar” bars or cafes, “Silver Dollar,” markets and so forth. The bar at the Wort Hotel in Jackson was started about 1950 and it advertised that it had “2,032 uncirculated Morgan Silver Dollars from the Denver mint inlaid into its famous, serpentine bar.” As I recall hearing, the Silver Dollar in Lusk (when it was on the Main Street side of the Ranger Hotel) used to have silver dollars on display.
Getting paid with a silver dollar couldn’t be beat, say, with anything else, even a paper “silver certificate,” after two days’ painting Joe Waggoner’s fence or pulling weeds for the week for Uncle Sam. Something about their sheer bulk made you feel rich. Therein lies the downside—fast growing holes in one’s pockets from carrying them around all day. (Maybe that was the attraction of them for local merchants in the tourist trade–they “burned a hole in your pocket”–better spend them fast).
A professor I had at the University of Arizona had a silver dollar story with a Wyoming tie. Back in the early 1950s, his father was president of Washington and Lee, UW opponent in the 1950 Gator Bowl in Florida. Team travel was costly in those days—even his father’s university had trouble with the extra expense of travel from Virginia. He said that, at halftime, the PA announcer came on and told Cowboy fans (a large contingent was there), “Hey, can you help us out with the travel costs?” He maybe had seen two silver dollars in his entire life. Suddenly, silver dollars came raining down on the field! He said he thought there must have been “a thousand” of them, with the cheerleaders and bench players running around on the field piling them into big buckets. He was “very young” at the time and it was a memory that lasted a lifetime.
I had my own run-in with loud silver dollars, years later. Brother Steve and I had ridden with Don Cooper and a group of students from Worland to a church conference held at the State Fairgrounds in Douglas. It would be two days with an overnight stay in the barracks-like building for boys. (The girls stayed in an adjacent building). I never slept more than four-five hours a night (until recently) and sleeping in a bunkbed in a barracks on the top bunk with brother Steve below, meant hanging my shirt and pants on the upper railing of the bed.
Early, early the next morning with all 40 or 50 still sound asleep, I decided to get up. Pulling on the shirt and buttoning it went quietly fine, but I’d forgotten about the dozen or so silver dollars in my pants pockets. The silence of the dim morning was shattered by my silver dollars, popping out and clanking in every direction.
The minister from Cheyenne, awakened from a deep sleep in the adjacent lower bunk, could only put his hands over his ears and mutter, “Good grief.” Brother Steve was mortified. He said it was a good thing someone didn’t have a rope! Willing hands and sharp eyes from many (former) sleepers helped me run down the errant coins—and I got them all back (after all, it was a church conference).
Word of the incident spread quickly and soon I had a new nickname that lasted the length of the conference. “The silver dollar kid from Worland,” spoken through clenched teeth with eyes squinting by people who were there…