A growing number of businesses across the country are refusing to accept cash for goods and services. That will create problems for me and our four-year-old granddaughter Charlee Ann.
There are new reports every day about restaurants, hair salons, bookstores and other places not taking real money. Businesses like Starbucks and Amazon Books have stores that won’t accept cash.
Charlee Ann came into a good bit of money during the holidays when she played a game called Left, Right, Center with a bunch of her kinfolks.
There were 22 aunts, uncles, cousins, grandkids and other relatives gathered around a long table for the competition. Each one put up three dollars to participate.
Players roll three dice that have the letters L, R or C or a big dot on them. If an L or R comes up, players pass dollars to the person on their left or right.
For every C that is rolled, participants must put that many of their dollars into the pot at the center of the table. Players can keep a dollar for every dot that turns up.
Eventually, all the money ends up in the center, and the last player still holding a dollar wins the pot. It’s a pretty simple game that even little kids like Charlee Ann can understand and play.
Charlee Ann won the $66 pot at the Christmas family gathering. I think she put some of it aside for federal taxes, and we are hoping the whole family won’t be charged with illegal gambling.
Nobody made any profit from the game except Charlee Ann, and nearly all the players were good Baptists, including some deacons. They would certainly not knowingly participate in illicit gambling.
Charlee Ann put her 66 one-dollar bills in a Ziploc bag and then placed the container of money in the little discount Vera Bradley handbag she got for Christmas.
As hard as Charlee Ann has been trying to spend and distribute the money, she still had every dollar of it the last time we checked. She must be going to a lot of places that won’t accept cash.
We were at church a couple of days after her financial windfall. When they started taking up the offering, Charlee Ann got the wad of cash out of her handbag and tried to pass it out to family and friends around her to put in the collection plate.
Nobody would take the hard-earned money from a four-year-old girl. In fact, we gave her some more dollar bills for the collection plate. We think some of those went into the plate and others ended up in the Ziploc bag.
I took all four of the granddaughters to get ice cream not long ago. The ticket was sort of steep since all five of us had double scoops of hand-dipped Blue Bell, and Charlee got out her Ziploc bag of cash to help pay the bill.
My conscience wouldn’t let me take money from the youngest grandchild in the bunch to help fund our ice cream outing, so Charlee still has all her winnings.
When Regina and I got married 17 years ago, it bothered her that I paid for meals, tennis shoes, laundry and nearly everything else with cash. It’s something I had done all my life.
She decided I needed a bank debit card and did all the paperwork to get me one. All she asked was that I keep receipts and a detailed accounting of all my expenditures from the joint account.
When the first statement on my new debit card came in, there were charges for a tennis racket, running shoes, sport coat, ties and
other things for which I had forgotten to provide receipts to Regina.
She confiscated the card and told me I could resume my long-time practice of paying for things with cash.
Now there is apparently this nationwide movement to curtail the use of real money at businesses, because some companies feel it is more efficient and cuts down on theft and other crimes.
That will be a burden for people like me who try to avoid the web of technology and red tape involved in getting credit cards, keeping them paid, renewing them and all that.
This new reluctance in the world of commerce to deal with cash money will also make it more difficult for Charlee Ann to spend the dollar bills she won gambling and can’t seem to get anybody to take.
REPRINTED FROM THE NATCHITOCHES TIMES