Man Tapes Dollars to Window for Needy

AP ^

[Dallas]

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -

A downtown businessman has decided to share some of his good fortune with others a dollar at a time.

Mike Jeffcoat, 42, a corporate furnishings consultant, taped 300 $1 dollar bills to his office window Friday along with a note: "Please take only what you need. Remember others."

Many in the crowd took nothing, while some took a few bucks for a cup of coffee, Christmas presents or a bus ticket. It was all gone in 35 minutes.

Jeffcoat said he believed wallpapering the window would allow people to grab what they needed without much hassle.

As he hung money, Jeffcoat said one stranger gave him $20. The man didn't have singles and wanted to help. Others gave a few bucks.

Sharmel Shirley, 23, and Sadaka Kimble, 24, split the final $41. Shirley needed to pay a power bill. Kimble's daughter needed diapers. Both women said they've been out of work for four months.

"Money just flapping in the wind," Shirley said. "It was like, `Wow!'"

[cryptical]

Wouldn't it have been "better" to have the government run this program? It seems to me that private charity like this disenfranchises government social workers. If more acts like this occur, the government might have to lay off dozens of people with degrees in Social Work, Womens Studies, and the like.

[KineticKitty]

How can this be???? Everyone says America is Bad BAD BAD. < /sarcasm>

[boris]

There is a story about mathematician Paul Erdos. He cared about nothing except math. Since he did not have a bank account, when he won a prestigious prize in math, he got it in cash.

A friend and he were walking to go to dinner when Erdos was approached by a beggar. "How much will dinner be?" he asked his friend. "About $25, I think."

Erdos carefully peeled $25 from a thick wad of bills--around $5000 as I recall--and gave the rest to the beggar.

--Boris

[Consort]

He feels their pane.

[maxwell]

That's pretty durn cool. Maybe I'll do that someday... I'd have to have 300 bucks first though...

[Dallas]

LOL...

[Mia T]

This act appears to be a perversion of one of Erdos' self-deprecating sayings, "I should be put under tutelage." (In Hungary, if a rich aristocrat became senile, his family put him under tutelage, i.e., he was given expenses but couldn't touch the capital.