learning the value of money in my youth

I mentioned in a previous post that I had flown to Japan and back. I grew up as an army brat and lived in Japan in 1952 or so. Second grade, 7 or 8 years old I suppose. I was not overly supervised as a seven year old and ran with kids from my age to 11 or 12 years old. The Military community used a form of currency called script instead of American dollars. The script was all paper money including nickels dimes and quarters. The Japanese economy used Yen as they do today except, then the exchange rate was 360 yen to one dollar. The military ran free shuttle buses from the neighborhoods down to what would be called a mini-mall today, and then down to the Japanese business district and back. The point being, we kids could get just about anywhere for free. My first introduction to banking and money changing was based on free transportation and the exchange rate. The following process worked best right at the end of the month when the GI's and Sailors just got paid.

We would round up what script money we could get from our parents or find in our dads pants pockets and ride the bus down to the Japanese business district. We would approach a GI or sailor and hold out our script and say we needed yen to shop for toys because the local merchants couldn't accept script. An odd amount of money was best because it made the conversion more difficult even for well educated sailors. They would do their best to make it right but always gave more value than was accurate. We knew the right amount and would never let them short us.

Now we have a little more in yen than we had in script so we would ride the bus back to the PX (military WalMart) and find another GI to trade yen for script to spent in the PX because they would not accept Yen. The exchange woulld ALWAYS be in our favor and sometimes the GI's didn't even want our money, so we would haave both the Yen and script.

We would do this all day long but as we got more and more value we would only offer small amounts for trade because we wanted to look needy and cute instead of rich and manipulative. On a good payday weekend we could convert 50 or sixty cents into 5 0r ten dollars. It should be noted that we never cheated the troops. If they asked "how much is 50 cents worth in Yen?" we would tell them 180 and pro'ly get 200 anyway. Did I mention that I grew up to be a Banker?

When I was twelve Elvis, Buddy Holly and hula hoops were invented and became popular. By the fall of that year, everyone knew about them but me. I spent the summer on the farm in South Dakota with my Cousin Carol Rae. My granny said "don't go, those farm kids will pro'ly try to drown you in a stock pond."
It was the summer that they closed off the Oahe Dam and started collecting water. My Uncle owned a great deal of condemned bottom land with crops and livestock still on it. As the water rose over the next several days and weeks, we spent time digging potatoes, herding sheep, cutting and stacking hay, and swimming in the new "lake" . I should say, the men did those things. My cousin and I mostly played in the water.
We drove the 57 Plymouth Station wagen down to where the potatoes were planted and began digging them before the water got there. When we saved all we could and went back to the car, the water had risen over the floorboards and drowned all my firecrackers and my first basemans ball glove.
We waited for the hay stacks to float free from the rising water. The men wrapped cables around them and to a couple of motor boats to tow them to dry ground. Carol and I were swimming around the stacks noticing a great number of small rodents in the hay. I picked up a mole by the tail because I had never seen one before. It wheeled around and bit me on the index finger and wouldn't let go. I flung it across the water with a hunk of my skin in its mouth and still have the scar. I never told anyone because I was afraid I would have to get rabies shots.
We (the men) were herding sheep off of a peninsula that had become an island and I discovered a little pink baby pig and captured him. What a squealer! We took him home to the farm, bottle fed him with the bum lambs and made him my pet for the summer. I went back to the farm a couple years later and my pig had become as big as a house. The next time I went...the pig was gone.
There are other single memories of the summer on the farm and I may tell some later. When I returned home, by airplane, A Western airlines twin engine DC 3 Gooney bird, the stewardess asked if it was my first airplane ride and I told her, "No, I have flown to Japan and back." I don't know if she believed me or not but she didn't give me special attention anymore. I wasn't very smart about women at that age.

Oh, look, see Spot run.

Well, here is an inaugural entry to my blog. I will try to be grammatically correct in my presentation, and will use the spell checker often, knowing that homonyms used incorrectly escape the spell checker.

I am going to tell stories of my ageing process as I remember them. I may tell stories on my children, but not to embarrass them. They will be stories that stick in my mind as significant in their life or significant in my memory of them growing up.

If some of the facts of these stories are not exactly accurate or right,....They ought to be. As one ages, certain stories have more impact on the memory process than others. That explains why some folks, (my Dad) tell the same stories over and over. In an effort not to offend my dad, I would listen to the stories as if it was a first reading. It was a small price to pay.

So, for you, my daughter Nancy, I will tell some stories and archive them here in this blog. If you want to help me with the appearance, please do.