June 8, 2025

By Arthur H. Gunther III

thecolumnrule.com

You can plant “seeds” wherever you walk. Well, not literally, just in coin of the realm.

These days when I meander, no matter where that is, and if I have change in my pockets, I usually throw a nickel or a dime or a penny into woods or streams or on mountainsides, off trails, just about anywhere.

These are “seeds” for the future, hopefully decades hence, even a century. I hope individuals will delight in finding say, a quarter with George Washington’s image on one side and a state symbol or eagle on the reverse. Maybe, excitedly, they will run home and tell others. Perhaps they will look up history, if it is still written, and learn about the American Revolution and the first leader of a land called the United States. (May that nation still exist, and as Washington and the founders intended.)

Sowing coins is a way of hoping for a secure future. I cannot take credit for the idea – it came from a walk so long ago with my late father and brother. For a short time when I was 5 and my brother was 4, we were living in a rural community called Sloatsburg, N.Y. One warm summer morning, trekking along Seven Lakes Drive, our Dad stepped on “something,” and we stopped. Lo and behold, he found a coin or two, just enough for ice cream at Miele’s. Now, of course, my father had “seeded” the road with those coins.

In his own way, he was also planting seeds for the future in his sons.

The writer is a retired newspaperman.

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