No Quarter Given

While doing laundry, I thought some about the currency with which I paid for the use of my apartment building's machines: the quarter. There have been considerable changes with it in my lifetime. There was the whole state quarters thing, for one. I think it's over, but for years and years, otherwise reasonable and intelligent people wasted time speculating about what the special design on the back of the quarter would be for each state. That's not so bad, really, but what really blew my top was to walk into stores and see a quarter- otherwise known as a 25-cent piece- for sale at prices well in excess of its face value. I'm not mollified by any argument that the little plastic case and foam liner make up the difference. They don't, and it wouldn't matter if they did. As a matter of principal, I won't ever pay more than face value for recently-minted US currency.

Where the quarter is concerned, though, I guess that I'm most interested with the way I've changed in relation to it. Today quarters are for laundry machines and parking meters. My earliest recollections, however, are in and around school as a boy. Once a week, some employee would man a soft serve ice cream machine, and sell it to us kids for a quarter for a cone. There would be just one flavor, and you hoped it was a good one, and not something like mint or spiced pumpkin. Whatever it was, you were going to get one anyway. I can't imagine that the school's motive was fundraising- not at that price. The bake sales were for that. I suppose they were just trying to do something nice so that kids could be kids. This was before there was so much concern about displaying a consistent attitude about nutrition for school meals.

The quarter seemed huge in my hand. In my memory, four non-overlapping quarters completely covered my palm. Perhaps that memory is faulty, but I'd swear that my hand grew freakishly large and they deliberately made the quarter smaller to confound me. The value of the coin got smaller, anyway. I used to love buying almost anything from a quarter-operated machine. Of course, I was drawn to soda and snack machines like moth to a flame. To have two quarters was to have the world at your feet. A Coke was like a gold brick in my eyes.

Vending machines weren't all for me. I was an odd kid, and a good example of that was that whenever I was out of town for a boy scout trip or something else, I loved buying newspapers. I wasn't terribly interested in national papers. I mainly liked local ones. Even my hometown paper was good, but I loved getting a San Diego paper or whatever place I was in. The value of the paper was so disproportionately high in relation to the two quarters, it felt like paying two hundred dollars for a car.

I even kind of liked using pay phones. It was never really the experience I hoped for since I only laid eyes on an actual phone booth once, but it was still kind of neat in the absence of one. I'll tell you what I didn't like, though: those machines that imprint a design on a penny. Other people like these because it provides a memento. All I know is that you put in several quarters and a penny, and get nothing in return but a penny you can't spend and which does nothing more than announce that you were at the Circus Circus Hotel & Casino. No thank you.

In all of these quarter-fed machines (with the one above exception), there was an pleasurable aesthetic experience that I suppose it's difficult for most people to understand. For most, the actual benefit derived from the machine in exchange for the quarters is the only thing of interest. For me, that's only part of it. It's the feel and look of the quarter in the light. It's the noise it makes when it goes in, and the anticipation as the machine receives it and completes the transaction by releasing some product. Sometimes it's the torrent of change that comes rushing down the slot. Sometimes it's the social encounter of actually turning the quarter over to a human being you have to speak with as you get what you want. It's all good. I love quarters.