Wednesday, May 04, 2011

Dollars from Heaven

Last week the Old Salt and I had some business that took us to the historic town of Herman, Missouri. Herman sits on the Missouri River just like our town. If we could go by boat it would be a short distance but by road is a different story.

While there we stopped into a small restaurant called Lyndee's for lunch. It was the first time we had been in this restaurant so I was surprised to find the ceiling covered with money. This was not monopoly money either. It was good old American cash. While checking out the ceiling I could see some five and ten dollar bills mixed among all the ones. I had never seen this done before. But, the Old Salt filled me in on some of the places he has visited around the world that did the same thing.

I ask our server about the cash on the ceiling and learned that they started doing it over five years ago. The mother of the restaurant's owner had just passed away and they wanted to do something in her name to honor her. They named their project "Dollars from Heaven" and the cash is removed each year on May 22, the Mother's birthday, and donated it to a needy family in the town.
These odd bills were attached to the wall above the cash register.

I mentioned this experience to a friend and was told we have a bar in our town that has bills on the ceiling but they did not know what was done with the money. Since we no longer visit bars we had never been in this club.

So a couple of days later we headed down to the riverfront to check out the Doc Haus. We arrived late in the morning, hoping to schedule our visit before the place got busy.

Sure enough the ceiling was covered with bills. That is me in the pink checking out the ceiling. I was surprised to find a few twenties and fifties mixed among the other bills.

The couple working that day said they started encouraging customer to toss the bills on the ceiling about eight years ago with the intent of giving the money to charity but as of now have never done so. Apparently, the owners have not been able to agree on which charity to donate to. The bartender told us that he believes the owners have decided to leave the money there until the day the place shuts down and then donate it to a charity. If you look close you will see that some of the bills are a lot darker that the others. Cigarette smoke has turned them a dark yellow.

I feel rather lucky to have discovered these places in time for the Cashjocky to turn those bills into some cash for this weeks letter C challenge at Alphabe Thursday.

I am linking this post to Alphabe Thursday.

Jenny Matlock
To check out the other participants take on the letter of the week visit Jenny Matlock and her friends by clicking on the icon above.

8 comments:

  1. A very interesting & unusual post for 'C'!

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  2. I remember seeing a place like that when I was a kid, but I have no idea where it was. I was just fascinated with all the money from different countries!

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  3. I've never seen that.

    Pretty crazy!

    And kinda cool, too.

    =)

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  4. I have never heard of this before. I hope they don't have a fire.

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  5. Oh dear, a fire.. that would be a shame.
    Seems like a fun idea.

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  6. Sounds like a wonderful idea, as long as all those bills are near the sprinkler system!!!

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  7. I remember a restaurant up the McKenzie River in Oregon that was likethat -- don't know what they did with the $$ -- it is closed now. It's better to give it to Charity like that first one.

    Pretty cool of you to go to the bar to finish out this post!! Anthing for good journalism huh!

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  8. What a neat post! I hope they do give the money to charity...it would probably do more good than just hanging around on the ceiling - ha!

    But what a fun post! I've seen dollars stapled to a wall but never anything like this.

    What a fun stop today!

    Thank you for linking.

    A+

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