When I was a young child growing up in Concord, some of the older gentlemen I encountered would share some of their favorite sayings with me. They would practice their verbal skills in a manner both friendly and quite dated.

I recall hearing, “Don’t let the door hit you” as I exited a building or “Don’t let any grass grow under your feet” if I was standing idle when I should have been working. Some of the comments spewing from my aging friends were quite entertaining and shared by me over the years. Other sayings now deemed off limits and certainly not appropriate to use.

My encounters and lessons in the art of old-time Yankee humor was provided by people who were kind and generous with the intention of injecting some humor into another mundane summer afternoon. They were all hard-working, and many were skilled at the jobs they performed. They worked on Rattlesnake Hill quarrying granite. Some served on the front lines during the horrific First World War engaged in trench warfare. Others knew different hardships, but remembering them brings a smile to my face on this day.

A good lot with my best interest at heart they provided many interesting engagements so many decades ago. One particular elderly gentleman would frequently tell me “Don’t take any wooden nickels.” An odd comment that I did not understand but I would smile and continue on my way. It is those wooden nickels that I was advised not to take that I speak about this day.

The summer of my youth visited one warm day in 1965. It was in fact July 24, 1965, when the wooden nickels came to Concord and I obtained one, against the advice of my elders. I held a genuine wooden nickel that summer, safely tucked into the front pocket of my jeans. I would remove it often to show my friends and read. We were celebrating the 200th anniversary of Concord that summer and the Concord Bicentennial Committee gave 55,000 new wooden nickels to local merchants to celebrate this very grand event.

Wooden nickels existed long before their first appearance in Concord and used to promote business across the country. The Concord Bicentennial Committee told all of the local merchants to use the wooden nickels as change when purchases were made at their businesses, especially the merchants located down on Main Street at participating locations. The Concord Bicentennial wooden nickels could be saved as a souvenir, used for purchases or used as any real nickel would be used.

So it was I ventured upon my Schwinn Stingray bicycle down to Main Street in search of a pocket full of wooden nickels. It was just three short days after the 55,000 wooden nickels went into Concord circulation that the U.S. Treasury heard about the doings along Main Street. The Treasury sent an agent to Concord to investigate, and his findings were not what the merchants desired.

The agent advised the people in Concord that they were engaging in illegal activity with the wooden nickel currency. The agent further stated that if a wooden nickel was given to a customer as change for a purchase and then the customer used the same wooden nickel to make an additional purchase a crime was committed. A wooden nickel is not legal currency and the U.S. Treasury Department was not amused that day in Concord.

The attention afforded the wooden nickel caper that summer only brought additional attention to the matter. People were now flocking into town in search of wooden nickels. The Concord wooden nickels were quite attractive, on one side the words “Wooden Nickel Concord Bicentennial” while on the opposite side of the coin there were four variations depending on the coin you possessed: the New Hampshire Capitol, a bearded man, a woman in an old-fashioned dress or the image of our beloved Old Man of the Mountain.

So it was that summer that our old residents engaged in questionable antics down on Main Street, in time the wooden nickels disappeared as they were collected or lost or perhaps discarded by a few secret Department of Revenue Agents. It was said at the time a reporter stopped at a roadside diner outside of Concord and the reporter attempted to tip the waitress at the diner with a Concord wooden nickel. She said, “we don’t take wooden nickels. The day I take wooden money I’m closing my business.”

So my friends, as you continue to enjoy your remaining summer days in leisure please heed the advice of the old timers from Concord. Don’t take any wooden nickels.