"WALKING LIBERTY" HALF DOLLAR...USA 1917-1947

 "WALKING LIBERTY" HALF DOLLAR....USA 1917-1947"

I have written about the Walking Liberty Half Dollar, 

( silver content 0.36169 troy oz.) before, and likely will

do so again, for this coin, with it's beautiful artistic

design, and marvelous "heft," characterizes for me...

"THOSE MATCHLESS DAYS" (as a 1951 CHS classmate

recently called them) of the mid twentieth century, when

we were growing up.

This coin recalls those times like nothing else except, maybe:

------USS ARIZONA exploding at Pearl Harbor....photo

------B-24's and B-29's droning around Clovis, endlessly...

------USS Yorktown sinking at Battle of Midway...photo

------Doolittle's B-25 taking off from the USS HORNET...photo

------U.S.Marines raising the flag on Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima

------Ike talking with the Normandy paratroopers,  D-DAY photo

------Incredible view of the D-Day fleet, photo

------B-17's over Germany, photo...

Those of you "late-comers" to the planet may never fathom

those times and the cost, some 499.000 men, which was paid

for our freedoms today, plus a whopping 288 billion dollar cost

for the war (including lend-lease....)

The Walking Liberty also speaks to me of happy, carefree 

boyhood times....ah, there was no TV, no computers, no computer 

games, no smart phones, (no "any" phones with a lot of people---

who could afford phones?)....But we found plenty to do, and

entertained ourselves.

It was really a grand time...a marvelous time---with our sharp

Xacto knives, our Testor's Model Airplane cement, and with any 

odd job we could find, we managed to scrape up enough money

to go to WOOLY'S for a WWII airplane kit now and then.

There were the "DAVE DAWSON IN THE R.A.F." books and we

read 'em all!

We mowed lawns in the hot summertime and usually got about

50 Cents, a Walking Liberty for our work...then kept it a few weeks---

it was just too special there in our pockets...to ever spend.

(My former yard man, from Mexico, charged me $90.00 last year

for a hour-and-a-half of yard work.)

We scraped bricks there at the building of the Clovis Asbury Methodist

Church, at Reid and Ninth, getting sunburned, and ruining our dads'

hatchets---for two cents a brick. They used a lot of "pre-used" bricks...

A half dollar would buy a haircut.... or a double feature at the Lyceum

on Saturday, with popcorn, and a coke and ham salad sandwich

at Woolworth's after the movie. Or maybe a Pepsi and a Coney

Island hot dog, down there south of Janeway Drug, at that

beloved little cafe, with dogs simmering right there in the window.

There was radio at night, until 9 p.m.---Fibber McGee and Molly,

Red Skelton, Henry Aldrich, Bob Hope, MR. D.A., Amos and Andy,

and People Are Funny....we kids didn't care much for Fulton Lewis,

Jr. and his Nicaragua road, or Gabriel Heatter...but guess what!?

In the afternoons, you could get 15 minute programs right down

our alley(s)---The Shadow Knows, Superman, The Green Hornet,

and Tom Mix! (I got my secret Tom Mix signal RING from Ralston

Cereal Co. for two box tops and 25 cents, and it blew"splendid"

with a loud "whirr"---but Tom Mix never came. I still have it.)

"Funnies" were what kept us going...there were comic books galore,

during our 9-12 years, and we traded with each other; Dad bought 

the Denver Post  (15 cents on Saturdays) and Prince Valiant was

ever tangled up with that giant octopus there in the ocean...and

lost "The Singing Sword," and I worried about it for years. I called

him "Prince Violet."

We got the CNJ down in the floor in Art's and Bob's living room

and checked every day at 4 p.m. to find out about Joe Palooka

and Jerry Leemy, fighting the mean Nazis in France. (We thought

they were "NAY-ZEES," check the word.)

Playing baseball and football, marbles and tops, going down

to the old lake at the end of Fourteenth Street and rummaging,

killing those awful "TRANSLERS," digging foxholes, wiping-out

the Nazis and "Nips" in our AO...has all been documented 

previously and joyously, in earlier posts...

On hot afternoons it came time to find and sell some two-cent 

soda pop bottles, enough for five cent twelve-ounce-Pepsis and
some Tom's peanuts to fill it...or a good old frozen five cent
Popsicle...banana-flavored! All could be bought at The Pleasant
Inn, just across from Clovis Memorial Hospital.

Space would prevent my trying to name all the fine teachers we

kids had in out growing up days...it'd be fun to try it...

I don't know...sometimes as I look back decades and decades 

ago, it seems like the sun might have been a little bit brighter

then---after all, the sun was younger...and our citizens seemed

a little wiser...then...

Yes, the Walking Liberty Half Dollar, said to be one of the finest

designed of all the coins...DOES in truth remind me of those

earlier times in our history, when I as a boy carried one to town

on a Saturday, walking down West Grand and by Jake's Rubber

Welder's....headed for Main Street and rolling that coin around 

in my fingers....and anticipating a fun afternoon at the Lyceum.

There are those that say, "Oh, I don't live in the past."  

Friend, your whole life will be past before you know it...you ARE 

your past...tomorrow will be part of your past...relax and 

remember....and enjoy...

University of Colorado once had a fine documentary titled: "YOU 

ARE WHAT YOU WERE...WHEN."

**************

By MIL

3/05/16