"Goodwin-SmallChange" - читать интересную книгу автора (Godwin Parker)

PARKE GOODWIN

SMALL CHANGE

GONVILLE LEMMING, CONtrary to his name, would not run headlong over a cliff for
anyone, not even his boyhood friend, Hibbert Snodgrass. For Shoddy, Lemming
wouldn't step off a curb, for fear of missing a dropped coin. Both were
compulsive collectors, though their tastes diverged early on. Snodgrass made a
false start in matchbook covers at ten and built an impressive collection before
enthusiasm waned. At thirteen he foresaw no future in the field -- but his fate
was sealed when, scuffing along the street with Lemming en route to a Saturday
matinee of I Walked with a Zombie, Shodgrass snatched from the sidewalk a
freshly discarded, still fragrant Wrigley's spearmint gum wrapper.
Simultaneously, Lemming spotted a dime, dulled and worn, barely discernible from
the concrete it lay upon.

Within a few years each became a master tracker of his particular quarry. The
scion of well off people, Snodgrass gave little thought to money but could spot
a gum wrapper at thirty paces: new ones, old ones, foot-stamped, grimy or
rain-sodden, they added to his burgeoning horde.

"A penny found is a penny earned," Lemming maintained, poorer but equally sharp
of vision. No carelessly dropped coin or bill escaped the radar sweep of his
relentless quest. A steady jingle of copper and silver flowed into his poke,
though he never spent any of it without severe crisis of principle. He developed
the eyesight of a raptor, the whole paved city his mousing ground, able to
detect a penny -- the dark steel 1943 penny, mind you, rare in itself -- on new
pavement of the same hue fifteen yards away.

With time and maturity, Snodgrass and Lemming passed from practice to higher
theory. Lemming could never convince Shodgrass that gum wrappers held no
investment value even in the esoteric world of collecting. Jaded, unheeding,
Shodgrass sought new heights. Spearmint, Juicy Fruit, Beeman's, PlenTipak,
Carefree and Cinnaburst he regarded as mere prelude to ultimate triumph. He
heard of a fellow wrapper enthusiast a thousand miles away and negotiated for a
year by mail to buy the collection, offering a handsome price, for it contained
one of the very few grails of the narrow field: War Card wrappers from 1938,
almost unobtainable in any condition. Snodgrass's offer passed from ridiculous
to fabulous, but the owner adamantly refused to sell. How Shodgrass finally
acquired that trove and went on to plan the capstone of his career was whispered
darkly in the dusty meeting places of his kind.

Think of objets d'art so rare they are only rumored to exist, the stuff of
legend. The actual cask in which once lay the myrrh bestowed on the infant Jesus
by an oriental king, a handful of the grave earth of Vlad the Impaler, a piece
of the True Cross -- these are comparable. For Snodgrass had tracked down Fleer
Flickers gumball wrappers ca. 1940 with a cartoon strip printed on the inner
side of each. He was envied, of course . . . but colleagues muttered of his