Some years ago when I was working the traffic desk at USL Philadelphia I received a phone call from a fellow who wanted to ship a trailer-load of stuffed teddy bears to Honolulu for the upcoming State Fair.
He was part of a carnival group and this was a Ma & Pa operation. A price of $3000. was negotiated (prepaid since these carny folks had no banking channels) and delivery to the dock was set for a Friday afternoon. On the appointed day Ma & Pa arrived with their cargo - Pa driving and Ma holding a large "carpet" bag. The pier office was crowded with clerks, checkers and dockworkers when Ma strode in, approached the chief clerk and turned her carpet bag upside down thereby dumping three thousand crumpled dollar bills on his desk. The assembled group were "bugeyed" - they had never seen such a pile of greenbacks like that. Now in those days the banks all closed at 3:00PM - there were no drop boxes or ATMS and the petty cash drawer couldn't hold such a windfall so the poor freight cashier had to carry this bundle home to babysit over the weekend.
teejay8232@aol.com
glad to see you found internet in cape may.
ReplyDeleteanother great story. i bet $3000 was a lot of money back then. i can just picture the bugeyed reaction! it is hard to imagine life before debit cards and google. cheers, emma