A kid's lesson on sales taxes is hard to forget

When I was growing up in the Ozarks over yonder, my favorite hometown still had a dime store, a movie theater, a department store, a general store, a couple of chain hardware stores in addition to the home-grown Luna Hardware, two drug stores, a bank, a men's clothing store, a women's clothing store, a railroad station, several restaurants, a newspaper, two hotels and a motel, a drive-in movie theater, two funeral homes, several grocery stores, a florist, a couple of drive-ins serving malted milkshakes, lots of filling stations, schools, churches, some taverns, a liquor store, a library, three automobile dealerships, several barber shops and beauty parlors, a shoe factory, a shirt factory, some sawmills, feed stores and at least three doctors' offices.

Since my childhood, much of everything I've just described has disappeared. What did the town add, if anything? Well, it now has a genuine four-way stoplight at the intersection that once was held down by the First Baptist Church, Gamble's Hardware, Harris Department Store and, I think, the bank. Or maybe it was the post office.

It also has a McDonald's now, and a Wal-Mart.

The town also has several banks now. The banking business must be good. Look at all the banks right here in Cape Girardeau.

Since we lived on a farm when I was growing up, my connections to the town were on a tight schedule: Saturday afternoons, Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings.

Sundays and Wednesdays were for church, of course. I also took piano lessons from Mrs. Handford on Wednesdays. We didn't have a television set at home, so I usually got to watch "Sea Hunt" with Mr. Handford before my lesson. After half an hour of trying to arrive at some harmonious understanding with Mrs. Handford's grand piano, I would walk downtown to the church to meet my parents.

The most important day of the week, in my young mind, was Saturday. That's when I had to make important decisions about spending the quarter my mother gave me each week. Most weeks the money went for a movie and snacks from the theater's concession stand. That would leave enough for penny candy at the dime store. That's where I learned my basic math. It would take up to half an hour to decide how to spend the dime I had left over. Some of the candy was a penny a piece. Other sweets were two for a penny or even three for a penny. And some were a nickel each. So keeping track of how much you could buy depended enormously on your ability to add and multiply.

A visit to the dime store wasn't complete without making a tour of the toy aisles. In particular, I always thought my life would be complete if I could get my hands on one of those balsa airplane kits, the ones where you inserted the wings and put a fat rubber band on the plastic propeller.

So, for several weeks I drooled over the balsa airplane and forced myself to set aside at least two or three cents each week toward the day I could afford to buy my dream toy.

Finally, the Saturday came that I had enough. In addition to the weekly quarter allowance, my mother found four pennies loose in her purse and handed them to me. I had managed to save 10 cents, which gave me a net cash worth of 39 cents. The balsa airplane cost 37 cents, and I was certain that 2 cents would be enough to cover the sales tax. I was just positive.

I picked out the best of the balsa airplane kits and went to the dime store checkout. The nice lady at the cash register smiled, because she had sold a lot of balsa airplane kits to young boys. I fumbled in my pockets for all the loose change I had accumulated.

"That will be 39 cents and two mills," said the cash register lady.

Uh-oh.

I had forgotten about the mills. Do you remember? They were brightly colored plastic "coins" worth one-tenth of a cent. And stores expected you to pay sales taxes in increments of one-tenth of a cent. If I had had another penny, I would have been fine, and the clerk would have given me eight mills in change.

But I didn't have another penny. I put on my best "little boy doesn't deserve to be deprived of a balsa airplane for the lack of a measly two mills" look. The store clerk was unmoved. Fork over two mills, or no airplane, buster.

To show my earnest intentions, I told the clerk to keep my 39 cents and hold on to the balsa airplane while I ran up and down Main Street looking for my mother who, without a doubt, would see the necessity for advancing me a penny -- or two mills, if she had them -- so I could redeem my airplane.

I found my mother outside Toney's Rexall Drug Store. She said it was time to go home and to hurry on to the car. I was talking so fast she had no idea what I was saying, but she finally got the message that I needed another penny or two mills. She said she didn't have any mills, and she was saving three or four pennies for the parking meter.

This is where my story relies on telling you about my mother and parking meters. She never put money in the meter when she parked. But she always -- always -- fed the meter when she was ready to go home. She would calculate how many minutes she had parked, how many minutes were a penny's worth and determine a fair and equitable amount to put into the meter.

It dawned on me she had not yet made that calculation. I begged her to figure it all out and see how many pennies she had left. As luck would have it, she determined three pennies would be enough for the meter and, yes, there was a fourth penny in her wallet. I grabbed it from her outstretched hand and ran like heck for the dime store.

Epilogue: On its maiden flight, the balsa airplane got hung up in the branches of one of the ancient elms shading the front yard of our farmhouse. It was there for a long, long time before it finally broke up and blew away. It was a constant reminder of how quickly a young boy could blow 39 cents. And two mills.

Missouri figured out, by the early 1960s, that messing with mills was a waste of effort. The only mills left are in someone's button jar or hidden away in that old cigar box in the dresser drawer.

Now could somebody explain this: When was the last time you saw a 50-cent coin? Turns out the U.S. Mint hasn't made any since 2002. You can still order them from the mint or through some banks, if you like to collect seldom-used coins.

So, if the 50-cent coins are, like the plastic mills, obsolete, why are we still messing with pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters?

Just wondering.

Joe Sullivan is the retired editor of the Southeast Missourian.