“That’ll be eight dollars,” Ike Reed told the tall stranger who sat in the shiny red Cadillac.
“Eight dollars, eh,” the man answered. “Gasoline is getting higher. Why, I can’t remember it ever being forty cents a gallon before.”
Ike simply shrugged, perhaps from the cold December air, as the man stepped from the car, dug into his hip pocket, pulling out a genuine ostrich skin
wallet from which he extracted a ten spot.
“Keep the change,” he smiled.
“Thank you very much, Sir,” Ike smiled back.
As Ike walked away and as the stranger returned his wallet to it accustomed place, a green bill fluttered from the wallet, unnoticed. The wind caught
it and caressed it before it reached the ground and carried it up the Bowling Green Road like a miniature magic carpet.
Ten-year-old Joey Sampson pulled the ear flap of his aviator cap down and buckled the straps under his chin. The day was sunny, but cold. The chilly
air caused the sleeves of his brown leather bomber jacket to crackle when he swung his arms. Feeling festive and happy to be out of school on a
Saturday, Joey began to whistle.
As he walked down the Bowling Green Road to Abe’s Place, Joey would stop, retrieve a rock, and hurl it at an imaginary rabbit across the road. Once,
when he stooped, there was no rock handy, so he made his way to the ditch. His eyes scanned the small gravel, the roadside litter, and the dying weeds.
That’s when he saw it: a ten-dollar bill was caught in the bare branches of a shrub.
“Wow!” The boy exclaimed, as he bent; and with one quick swoop, picked up the bill and secreted it away in a front Levi pocket. He COULD use ten
dollars. Christmas was coming. He had two brothers and four sisters, plus his parents and a grandmother. He needed to buy them something for Christmas.
The ten would add to the twenty he already had deposited with grandmother for saving keeping. He would be able to buy everyone gifts at Knucklehead
Bentley’s Five and Dime Store. Maybe his luck was improving; maybe he would pass all his semester tests before Christmas dismissal.
That very afternoon in town, after he had said through two Westerns, a Tarzan serial, and three cartoons at the Dixie Picture Show, he went window
shopping. The ten-dollar bill was beginning to burn a hole in his pocket. He hadn’t even dare take it out and look at it, for fear that he MIGHT spend
it. But when he saw the new black and gold PANTHER toboggans in the window at Klein’s Department Store, he decided that it would hurt to spend JUST one
dollar, the price of the warm headgear.
He went inside where Butch Klein, a measuring tape draped around his neck, waited at the cash register. “Hello, Joey. How’s your mom?”
“She’s fine.”
“What can I do for you today?”
“I would like one of those PANTHER toboggans like in the window.”
“Sure. Got a new shipment in yesterday…in time for the cold weather.”
Butch went to a stack of caps on a nearby counter, picked up one of the black toboggans and returned with it. “Want a sack for your cap? I know
you’ll want to wear this one now and show it off to your friends.”
Joey took off his aviator cap and handed it to Butch. “Good idea. I got the money to pay you right here. I don’t want to charge this to my mother.”
He reached in his pocket and pulled out the bill crumpled there and handed it to Butch, who began to smooth it out.
“Hey, Joey, did you rob a bank,” Butch whistled through his teeth. “First hundred I’ve seen since tobacco season.”
Joey was confused. “Hundred? I gave you a ten. I found it on the side of the road.”
Butch showed Joey the dirty green bill. “Nope. See. There’s old Ben Franklin himself. This is A HUNDRED.”
Joey was speechless for a minute before he said, “Maybe I’d better take this money home and see what Mom says about it. Somebody might be hunting
for it right now.”
Butch returned the bill to the boy. “I’ll just put this toboggan on your mother’s account. I’m sure she won’t mind.”
When Joey returned to their brick-side farmhouse on the Bowling Green Road, he found his mother in the kitchen baking a cake for Sunday dinner.
“Want to lick the mixing bowl, Joey?”
Joey took the bowl and a spoon and sat down at the table. When he didn’t immediately attack the sweets, his mother asked, “You’re awfully quiet.
Something on your mind?”
He told her about finding the hundred-dollar bill and how he had thought it was a ten. That he was worried it might belong to a neighbor and that he
didn’t want to spend any of it if it did.
“I’m proud of you, Joey. This shows that you are a very responsible person. Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll tell your dad, and he can ask around at the
gas station if anyone lost any money. And if they haven’t, then I guess the money will be yours to keep. If anyone in the neighborhood has lost a
hundred, you can be sure Dad’ll hear about it. Money’s tight this Christmas, you know.”
After a week, the Saturday before Christmas, Abe had not heard of anyone losing any money…not even a dollar. Abe said that he, too, was certain
that if someone had lost that much money, they would come looking for it. Times were hard. Poor Mr. Hatfield had had a poor tobacco crop. Mr. Hatfield
had told him that after paying all his debts and expenses, he would have NO money for Christmas.
Joey went to his mother and told her what Abe had said. “And you know, Mom, I’ve decided what I want to do with that hundred.”
“What? Put it in your savings account…you know the money you’re saving for a car when you’re sixteen?”
“No. I want to use that money to see that the Hatfields have a good Christmas. Abe told me what a tough time they’re having.”
His mother smiled. “I know. Mrs. Hatfield came by here yesterday wanting to sell me some eggs. I bought three dozen although we have 20 laying hens.
She said that she was going to try to scrape up enough money to buy her kids some fruit for Chtristmas.”
Joey brightened. “Mom, we have 100 dollars we didn’t expect to have. Let’s find out what the Hatfield kids want for Christmas. Then me and you can
buy them presents…maybe something for Mr. and Mrs. Hatfield, too. Will you help me do that?”
Joey’s mother BEAMED, a tear in her eye. “I’ll be happy to help you; but we’ll have to keep all this a secret. Mr. Hatfield won’t accept charity.”
“We can make a plan,” Joey nodded.
And so, three days before Christmas, Joey and his mother went shopping. They felt like spies as they went from store to store, buying a couple
gifts here, a couple there. “We don’t won’t anyone getting suspicious,” his mother explained. They went to Kuhn’s Dime Store and bought dolls for the
Hatfield girls. They went to the toy department at Hancocks and purchased footballs for the Hatfield boys.
They went to Kirkpatrick’s Coal Yard and paid Mr. Kirkpatrick to deliver a load of coal to the Hatfields. Mr. Kirk agreed that he would say only
that the coal came from a friend. They went to Western Auto and got a set of tools for Mr. Hatfield. They went to W.V. Leedom and Son’s to get Mrs.
Hatfield a wool sweater.
Finally, they stopped by Guion’s Grocery, where they bought a turkey, canned goods, a sack of flour, a pound of coffee, and some sugar. They asked
Mr. Big Daddy Guion if he would deliver the groceries and say that they were from a friend, if he would be sure and keep their secret. When Mr. Guion
learned what they were doing, he included a large fruit and candy basket on his own…no charge.
On Christmas Eve morning Joey and his mother wrapped all the presents, putting the name of each Hatfield on each present, so that it would appear
that Santa had each one in mind. “But how are we going to deliver these presents?” Joey asked. “Mr. Hatfield will know that we bought them. We can’t
JUST say they’re from a friend.”
Mother laughed. “I have that all figured out. Your great Uncle Ross Woodward dresses up like Santa Claus and helps down at his church. He has
agreed to take the presents, put them on the Hatfield porch, then ring his big hand bell until someone comes to the door. Then he is going to stand
there until they see it’s Santa Claus. That should do it, shouldn’t it?”
Joey smiled. “You’re the smartest…and the BEST mom in the world.”
Mother wiped at some dust in her eye with the hem of her apron.
“And you’re the best SON a mother could ask for. Now, we have five dollars left from that hundred. Do you want me to put it your car account at the
bank?”
“No. Will you give it to me? Can I have it for my own?”
Mom reached in her apron pocket and handed the five dollars to Joey. Sure. "Found something else you wanted, huh?”
“No. I’m gonna bike down to Bean Alley and drop this five-dollar bill in the street…..for some other boy to find. It can be his lucky day.”
Mom, who wasn’t sure she had gotten all the dust from her eye, dabbed again with the apron.
The day the hundred dollars departed the tall stranger’s wallet and flew up the Bowling Green Road, the man returned to his nice home in South
Nashville. After he greeted his son, the boy asked, “What did you bring me today, Pop?”
The man hesitated. He had been on a business trip…and FORGOT to get his son (who had everything by the way) some trivial little gift. What could
he do? Ahhhh! He knew.
“Well, Son,” the man said, pulling out his wallet, I have a special surprise for you today.” He looked through the bills in his wallet. He knew
that there was a hundred in there, but it was gone. He must have lost it. Quickly, he took out a fifty. “Here, Son; since you are getting older, I
thought you might like money to buy yourself something.”
The boy looked at the money and shrugged. “Forgot to get me something again, huh, Pop?”
That night the man told his wife about the hundred he had lost. “I hope,” he said as he climbed into bed, “that someone who finds it has enough
sense to invest it wisely.”
MERRY CHRISTMAS from Algie Ray, Betty, and Brandon.