Marie and Rusty tell what we celebrate and how we do it. An added anniversary is included, so read on...
A Season of Celebrations
February 10th
By Marie & Rusty Goe
We love Birthdays at Southgate Coins. When any of our birthdays roll around we look forward to our favorite cake, ice cream or even ice cream cake! In order to find out what each person's favorites are, each employee is required to fill out a favorite food survey along with their W-2. The survey includes favorite candies, drinks, pizzas, fast foods, snacks and of course, desserts.
There are lots of uses for these surveys. They can be very helpful in choosing a restaurant for "Free Lunch Fridays." We look forward to picking a favorite place every week. We fill out our order in the morning and one of the girls is designated to call it in to the restaurant and then go pick it up. We are spoiled as our boss, Rusty, usually covers for us by waiting on the customers and taking the calls while we feast. Whether it's orders from the Olive Garden or Jack-in-the-Box, we eat with gusto.
At the end of the day the "Treat Tray," a Texas sized spread of all our favorite candies, is brought out. There is nothing like a bite of chocolate to soothe all the pressures of a day at work. We also stock the community snack bowl daily so we can grab a munch through the day. Lately it's been full of pretzels since they are "low fat."
But birthdays do "Take the Cake." We have had all types of cakes through the years. For example, two years ago, when I was on the low carb diet, the girls prepared a special chocolate chip cake for me with only a small percent of carbs. Dieting or not, we refuse to let anything deter us from celebrating; although the girls do chose regular birthday cakes to celebrate on their special days. Whether it's wonderful moist chocolate or yellow cakes with butter cream frosting topped with colorful flowers, caramel pecan cheesecakes, carrot cakes with cream cheese frosting, or white cakes with fresh strawberries, all have been a part of the festivities. On my last birthday, making up for the diet birthday from two years ago, I was presented with a Cold Stone ice cream cake with Butterfinger ice cream covered with a chocolate fudge coating. Holy Mackerel, Andy.
We celebrated Kelly's 19th Birthday last Saturday (February 4th) with a strawberry swirl cheesecake topped with chocolate covered caramel hearts; a birthday balloon; and a DVD we are all waiting to borrow. This Saturday (February 11th) is Amy's 20th birthday; and she'll soon find out what special cake awaits her (The secret is out: German Chocolate, with caramel ice cream). She's our resident ice cream expert (her last job: shift manager at Baskin Robbins), so it better be good (It was).
So this February we get to celebrate two birthdays: three if you count the celebration in our hearts honoring the first coin ever struck at the Carson City Mint on February 10th, 136 years ago. Now it seems to me that that remarkable event deserves a cake to celebrate, for sure! I'm going to let Rusty highlight some of the exciting points that make that anniversary so special: So here he is.
*********************
Residents of northern Nevada (and possibly the southern end too) have come under the spell of the recently released 2006 quarters. Such fervor over coins has not been experienced in the Silver State since the "CC" silver dollars were released by the Federal Government in the 1970s. Unless a person in Nevada is cloistered away in a desolate site in the middle of the Humboldt sink, he has probably heard of the new "Wild Horses" quarter. Everyone wants one and many Nevadans want rolls or even bags of them. All the elation proves without doubt, that if the people of Nevada are presented with coins with images or other markings symbolic of their state, demand will be strong.
No coins with ties to Nevada stir passions more than the ones minted in Carson City generations ago. State pride causes residents to cherish the Carson Mint's rich heritage, its underdog victoriousness, and its place in U. S. numismatics. When younger residents or those residents new to Nevada are introduced to the legacy of the Carson City Mint, interests are automatically aroused.
As we focus on birthday celebrations being observed in our Southgate family of faithful frontline assistants during February, it seems fitting to remember another important anniversary. On February 10th, 136 years ago, the first coins bearing a "CC" mintmark rattled off the big press at the Carson City Mint. Superintendent Abe Curry beamed with the glow of a first-time father witnessing the birth of his child. The excitement of the event has disappeared in the backwaters of time; but browsing through Carson City newspapers dated between February 10th and February 20th, 1870, one can catch a glimpse of the general euphoria expressed by locals. Few knew how popular (and valuable) these Seated Liberty silver dollars dated 1870 would become more than a century later. Nor could anyone have imagined how popular, how scarce and how valuable many of the other coins produced at the Carson Mint between 1870 and 1893 would become.
Numismatic interests aside, the magnitude of privileged status attained by Nevada for being one of only eight states to host a Federal Mint would not have dawned on its residents back then, as it often does not today. Only Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, California, Colorado and New York have the distinction of hosting a mint. All seven boast of significantly higher populations than Nevada, especially when 19th Century figures are considered. Each of the other 42 states has made significant contributions to our national solidarity, but minting coins was not one of them. Nevada is not only included among the elite for contributing coins to the nation's monetary system; its mint is also distinguished as being the only one to use two letters for its mintmark.
And how significant can it be that after 136 years, the same coin press used to mint the first silver dollars is still in operation? It stands supremely in its own showroom inside the Nevada State Museum, home of the old Carson City Mint. At least once a month its time tested mechanical parts, well conserved by museum curators, are fired up to strike commemorative medallions. This antique piece of machinery, symbolic of the legacy of the Carson Mint, just as the Energizer Bunny, keeps on going and going and going. In 2020, the revered mint will turn 150 years old and we hope we will be around to help celebrate the occasion. The younger generation of Nevada today, God willing, will be around in 2070 to give the old mint a grand bicentennial birthday bash. In the meantime, every resident in the state should acknowledge a day of remembrance every year around February 10th to preserve the significance of the special gift granted to Nevada ages ago by the Federal Government.
Birthdays are great, because they allow us to express our appreciation for people dear to our hearts and for memories that we cherish. So now with joy and gladness, we wish the members of our Southgate family who are celebrating birthdays this month and those who have recently achieved other milestones with us, the best of everything. We also shout three hurrahs for the 136th anniversary of the Carson City Mint, long may its legacy live.