It’s Friday, so it’s as good time as any to delve into the mailbag once more at Castle Sidewalker. After the flood the day before last the letters are a little damp, but still legible. This week I received a letter from Cap’n Tinkerson, for those of you not familiar with him you can find his bio by clicking this link. It is about half way down the list of miscreants!
Anyway this is what he had to say:
Lord Sidewalker,
Baltimore, the city of my residence, has introduced a new scheme for collecting charitable contributions for the homeless. They have placed a series of fake parking meters at random points on the sidewalk. (Note these parking meters are not near obvious parking spaces to avoid confusion). I assume they are recycling the old style parking meters which have been replaced by “pay and display”. I recently found a coin at the base of one of these charity collection devices. I shall not share my next action, but I am curious to know what you would do on discovering coinage in a similar location?
Regards,
Cap’n Tinkerson
LS: After recovering from my initial shock – people pay for parking in Baltimore? I settled down to consider the question at hand. The mantra we live by at Castle Sidewalker is; ‘Every coin has a home…in my pocket!’ But as you see not every situation is created equally. There is a low probability that this coin was dropped elsewhere and rolled to the base of the charity meter, therefore one would have to pick it up and proceed to deliver the coin to its intended location within said meter.
I’m not going to ask the good Cap’n to reveal his course of action, as I know he does a lot of good work for charity, and there is no way that the coin in question found it’s way into his chest full of booty.
In other news, this week I did an interview for one of my favorite blogs Red Pine Mountain. It is based on a rural outpost in Vermont, she has some lovely photographs and good posts. It is my ‘virtual’ escape from the concrete jungle that surrounds me. I’d like to thank the ‘Mountain Woman’ for the opportunity to be interviewed and the flattering lead-in she bestowed upon me. The full interview can be read by clicking here
Have a great weekend…
-Luke Sidewalker
-Current balance $24.23
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Interesting conundrum for sure. I know what I would do.
Thank you for the wonderful write up. Now if only my remote outpost had a moat.
I would do the same thing you did. If I knew it was intended for charity, to charity it would go.
Considering how broke I am and how tough it is to make ends meet, if the “Charity device” was there or not, the coin would be mine. It’s not that I don’t care about others. It’s that I need to care about myself first.
This will probably turn off a bunch of people, but it’s my philosophy: “If that coin is loose and free, I’ll tell you it belongs to me.” It doesn’t include, of course, “Penny holders” at the stores, nor dropped wallets. Dropped wallets go to the owner with full contents intact. Same with credit cards, or anything that can be honestly Identified. Loose cash, a buck or two, will be mine. I once turned in a 20, thinking somebody needed it. It’s the way it goes.