I like that part where it’s everyone’s imagination until Mama sees it, then they’re gone within the hour.
Mrs. Smith was quite a little old lady when I knew her. She lived in an apartment across the hall from Irene on 22nd and I Street, in fact in the apartment right below the apartment Irene rented to my parents when they came to Sacramento in 1939 when my dad got a job as an aircraft mechanic at McClellan Army Air Field.
Mrs. Smith stood about 4'6" tall and always wore black victorian dresses with white ruffles at her throat. She would never miss a Wednesday, Friday or any Sunday Mass, and would walk to them despite her advanced age. As I recall, she finally passed away at 102 years old, still living in that apartment. She was a no-nonsense type of woman and took no guff off of anyone.
Irene was a hoot! She called my mom one day and asked if she could borrow my older sister and me for a while to help her count her money. When we got to her apartment Irene explained that she never paid for anything with exact change. . . only with currency. The change went into her purse until her purse got to heavy to carry, then she dumped it into a box on her desk, until it got full, then she dumped it into a trunk in her closet. Well, now the trunk was full and she had to empty it. . .
I've never seen so many coins in one place in all my life. . . I was thirteen at the time and my sister was 14, and we spent hours and hardly made a dent in the contents of that trunk, which was about 20" by 20" by 36" long and much too heavy to pull out of the closet. There were lots of $20 St. Gauden's and Double Eagle Gold coins, Hundreds of silver dollars, half-dollars, quarters, etc. I told Irene she should take all of this to a coin shop, but she said she was just going to take it all to a bank. . . I had stacks of the gold coins on the fireplace mantel- there were thousands of dollars in just those. I finally did convince her to take those to a coin shop on J Street that was close to her bank (my mom was going to have to drive her, because she didn't drive), but all the silver and everything else was going to the bank. I never did here how much the total in cash was. . .