Shiny Dime In the Toe

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Story ID:	1340
Written by:	Susan Hammett Poole
Story type:	Family Memories
Location:	LaGrange, GA. USA
Year:	1991
Person:	son Larry

A tradition involving a single thin dime has yielded priceless Christmas memories for my family. The following is shared with you all at this Christmas season.

"Our stockings were all hung by the chimney with care in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there." On Christmas Eve, my sister, brother, and I were always careful to hang our red and white knit stockings from hooks on the fireplace mantle, anticipating the treats that we would find there on Christmas morning. Magically, sometime during the night as we three children slept and dreamed, each stocking was filled with scrumptious little candies, tiny toys, fresh walnuts, Brazil nuts, almonds, and at the bottom could be found a Red Delicious apple stuffed in the heel of the stocking and a big juicy orange pushed into the toe of the knit stocking. Also, in the pointed toe there was always a new shiny dime hiding from eager young eyes.

This "shiny dime" tradition was carried on throughout my childhood of the 1950s and '60s, and I continued it when I married and had two sons of my own. No matter what else they discovered in their Christmas stockings when they dumped out the contents, my boys always looked for and exclaimed that they had found their shiny dime in the toe, as they each held theirs up for inspection!

Truly, I found out that this was one tradition which had become significant when the 22nd Christmas of my oldest son rolled around. He was serving in the U.S. Marine Corps during the first Gulf War; I mailed his Christmas presents and his hand-knit stocking overseas. When he was able to communicate with me after Christmas Day, one of the first things he said to me after thanking me for the box of gifts was, "Mama, you sent my stocking but there was no shiny dime in the toe -- did you forget?"

I was crestfallen that I had, indeed, failed to include the dime. I had forgotten the importance of tradition while my 'boy' was half a world away during a time when his world was topsy-turvy at best. It was a small thing, but to him a shiny dime spoke of 'home'.

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