Serendipity

Jon has been doing the banking for at least a decade, maybe two by now.  He has revamped the whole money box system, of course, little by little.  When he took over the money counting from my mother, we had money boxes for markets, but they weren't specifically assigned to a particular market. When the workers came home, they would straighten the money, leave $60 in the box, count the rest of the cash and leave the change undocumented. No one ever double checked the counting. They put their money in an envelope, wrote the total on it and that was that. We shoved the money box under the passenger seat of the market truck and there it sat until the next week.

That was not Jon's style.  Over time, he has turned the whole system into one where the count is accurate (I am still not sure it matters that much, since all that really matters is how much goes in the bank) and the coins are accounted for.  He is the kind of person who straightens every corner of every bill, makes sure all the edges are lined up, and the deposit slip is precise -- beyond what the bank expects or wants. Every night before market he assembles the boxes for each market, charging up the tablets, making sure exactly the right amount of coins and bills are in place, and even putting pens in each box. The boxes are still old cookie tins, some of them salvaged from the stash in his mother's furnace room. They are dented and dinged, they don't look special, and they have character.

A few years ago Rebecca got him a present. He now has a machine that counts the bills. One of his favorite toys.

I have childhood memories of my father counting money at the kitchen table. I remember him wiping the grit off the table after dumping the cash out of apron pockets.  He drove to the bank and made deposits on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. That's how tight the cash flow was. Jon makes deposits on Mondays. Nowadays there are credit card deposits that keep the money flowing and we are not as dependent on the cash deposits to keep us afloat.

This year has changed everything in the money counting department.  At the markets almost everyone uses a credit card now. We tape a reader to the table, one of the workers holds the tablet and enters the information, and the customer taps the card to the plastic block.  For a while people were afraid to use cash because maybe it was covered with virus.  Now we know that it is a low risk activity, using real cash, but the world has shifted and it may never go back.

All of this is preamble to the story I set out to tell.

Jon came home from the bank last week, looking fretful and puzzled. I asked what was wrong. He said his deposit was wrong.  What?! That hasn't happened in years.  What was wrong?  He couldn't explain it but the wad of cash that went into the magic money counter ended up being hundreds of dollars off. He just couldn't understand it. I wasn't very worried because there was nothing we could do about it -- the machine at the bank has the final say. He must have made a mistake. Oh well. I forgot about it.

Then the next day I went out to Loudoun to do some long overdue tractor work. I went by myself in our car (very rare), spent some sweaty hours mowing ahead of Stephen who was doing the spading, and when I was getting in the car to come home, I noticed a lot of twenty dollar bills under the driver's seat. Huh. That must be the answer to Jon's Uncle Billy moment.  I didn't even pick them up. Figured I could do that when I got home.

I stopped to say goodbye to Stephen. He walked across the field and asked if I had a check.  Nope. He needed a check to pay the trucker who was about to arrive with a load of chicken manure.  This is typical -- no warning. I need a check. I asked how much the poop was going to cost. He said something like about $750. I said look under my seat. He looked a little surprised, but when I opened the car door he could see an unusual pile of twenties. He sat down and counted them.  $780.  Okay, perfect, you can take that. Get a receipt.

And that's the definition of serendipity.