FRIDAY SURPRISE: "Somewhere, WIllard
Whyte is playing Monopoly with real buildings."
When I was a teenager, I took a trip to British Columbia, Canada.
Aside from the fact that they couldn't pronouce the "ou"
combination correctly ("Grouse Mountain", one of our stops, was
pronounced "Groose Moontain"), what struck me about the country was
the currency. Where our was the time-honored and respectable green
and black combination, theirs was colorful - garish, to my young
eyes.
I gave my good-natured hosts no end of ribbing about their "play
money", and by the end of my trip I was happy to be back in the
U.S., with our familiar greenbacks. This happened well before the
adoption of their famous bird-themed coin, but to this American kid
Canadian money has always been "loonie."
Today, of course, even the staid U.S. dollar is becoming more
colorful in an attempt to thwart counterfeiting. Most of the other
countries in the world have long since adopted colorful bills, and
some of them are gorgeous.
Check out The Color of Money from Around the
World.
-=[
Grant ]=-