When I was a child many years ago, I was a paperboy delivering my newspapers each day after school. This was when the Concord Monitor was an afternoon newspaper with publication on Saturday mornings, too.
I would walk on my paper route after sorting my 54 newspapers under the roof of the old horse trolley stop on the southern end of White Park where they were left for me. Some summer days I would load the newspapers into the side baskets on my black Schwinn Stingray bicycle and start delivering door to door. During the winter I would shoulder the old worn newspaper bag and walk from house to house depositing the newspapers under mailboxes, between doors and on covered porches. Friday was collection day when I would attempt to collect the money for the newspapers I delivered all week. I would return home Saturday mornings and gather my collected funds together so that I could walk down to the Concord Monitor office and pay my weekly bill.
As I gathered my pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters, I would examine each of the coins. In addition to being a paperboy, I was also a coin collector and always on the lookout for lost treasures. During my childhood, it was common to find silver coins mixed in with your change. Silver nickels from the war years, silver dimes and some silver half dollars, too. On a rare occasion I would be paid with a silver dollar … those were good days.
I would remove the old silver coins from my pile of money and swap the coins for a dollar bill or two from my savings bank on my dresser. I would then save each and every silver coin in a clean glass mayonnaise jar and hide it under my bed. Those silver coins were indeed coveted and desirable, especially if you were a 12-year-old boy with a paper route in the 1960s.
There were some interesting efforts by the citizens of Concord to circulate more silver coins into the general population. Silver dollars and silver half dollars were falling out of favor — our ancestors were fine with a pocket of silver dollars but in the mid-1900s there were other options that were less cumbersome. You would carry paper currency instead of silver dollars. A five-dollar bill certainly weighs less than five silver dollars. People were writing checks and the advent of the credit card was also a growing interest.
Less and less coinage was being pocketed in the 1950s and some people were not pleased. A concerted effort was made by local banks and businessmen to bring more silver dollars back into the hands and pockets of the people living in Concord, and they used a truly unique approach to do this in 1952.
Ten thousand silver dollars were circulated in 1952 into local businesses. Clarence Huggins was chairman of the Concord Automobile Dealers Association in 1952 and secured silver dollars from the U.S. Treasury by Mechanicks National Bank in Concord. The plan was to celebrate the annual George Washington Birthday Sales at local dealerships in a very special way using silver dollars.
There were 175 employees working in dealerships in the Concord area in February 1952, and every single one of them was paid their weekly salary in silver dollars only. Every merchant in Concord had silver dollars in their cash registers too, using them to provide change for their paying customers. The auto dealers implemented this silver dollar event with support from the entire community to not only increase car sales but to stress the importance of the economy to citizens.
Huggins said all automobile dealers in Concord would hold an open house on
February 21, 1952, to display the new 1952 models of their respective dealerships. Some of the dealerships even displayed old antique automobiles along with mechanical exhibits showing new improvements in modern vehicles.
I look back to this city-wide program instigated by the Automobile Dealers in Concord with
much admiration. Times were simpler and people were so very willing to participate and even promote the silver dollar program. It was a time when competition was enjoyable and certainly not vengeful. The dealerships sold some automobiles and the people living in Concord pocketed many silver dollars just like the generation before them did.
Sometimes when I receive change for a purchase at a coffee shop, I still find myself looking at the worn coins. The old dates and possibly a silver coin. You never know what you might find.