Long long ago in a state quite a bit south of here my dad had a metal stein on his dresser. In it he put his pocket change. I don't know what became of it before my brother and I were old enough to count change. I have fond memories of after. Dad would let us count the change and roll it into rolls and divide it evenly between us. Even if only one of us did the counting and rolling the proceeds were always split. This led to little windfalls of cash for us when we were kids. We loved this. We'd sit and meticulously count it all, roll it all and then divide it in half. Remainders that didn't make rolls went back in the mug. So I was small when I learned that little mountains of change can be large quantities of money. Sometimes in High School he'd still let us have his change long after we'd gotten jobs of our own.

Long ago, but not quite so long as the afternoons on the living room floor with my brother, in college I decided I wanted a dog, so I got a little blue glass jar and stuck all my pocket change and spare money in it, so someday when I graduated I could get a dog. It became known as the "Dog Jar." When I graduated it had enough money to get a dog, so the plan worked. I never really gave up the habit you see. But since it was sort of undirected random savings and the cash had stopped going in, just the change it hadn't seemed important to cash it in at any point. Well recently somebody observed that I had a lot of change. That in fact I had overflowing coin containers in every room. So this weekend I rounded them all up and stripped all the tokens, screws, paper clips and other detritus from the pile. I tried containing it in several things, all too small. Eventually I found a winner in the empty gallon vinegar bottle abandoned in my utility room.

Today I took it to the bank. $239.33. Also they gave me $6 for the chewed up ones I had. I deposited $100, and the rest is going back in the jar, because I'm saving for a shotgun, my beloved BT-99 Micro.