A North Carolina man says he was surprised as a child when he did a chore for his grandmother, and the Yankee dime she promised him turned out to be a peck on the cheek. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Paid with a Yankee Dime”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, this is Skipper Turk calling from Cary, North Carolina.
Skipper, welcome to the program. What can we do for you?
When I was in the, oh gosh, probably around 68 when I was a young kid, and I was doing a favor for my grandmother. I think I was vacuuming the floor. And she said, if you vacuum the floor for me, I’ll give you a Yankee dime. And I was all into archaeology and history and finding arrowheads and things like that. And I’m like, wow, I’ve never heard of a Yankee dime before. I can’t wait. And no one’s ever mentioned it, you know, all my life. I’ve never heard about this incredible Yankee dime.
So I went and hurriedly vacuumed the floor, and I came in. I said, so where’s my Yankee dime? And I got the nicest kiss on the cheek from my grandmother. And she said, there’s your Yankee dime.
And how did you feel about that, Skipper?
I was a little let down, but now thinking about, you know, now that it’s been quite a few years later, I think about it that it’s a warm remembrance.
Oh, that’s nice. And so I’m curious about where Yankee dime came from. Is it a carpetbagger holdover from the Civil War, or where did it come from?
Well, I think you’ve described it really, really well, that usually when you see or hear this, it involves bribing a little kid to do something, and then they do it, and they come back expecting their Yankee dime. And then, wah, wah. They don’t get it.
Well, I think that we don’t know for sure the origin, but I think you’re onto something with the carpetbagger, the Yankees who came down after. It predates the Civil War, though.
Does it?
Yeah.
Well, all right. It has more to do with Yankee thrift than anything, because Yankees were seen to be.
Oh, penny-pinching.
Yep, and they were less likely to give you their copper than they were to give you a smooch, because a smooch didn’t cost them a thing.
Oh. Well, yeah, there is another expression, Quaker Fip, which is a Quaker five pence, right?
Yeah.
Which means sort of the same thing. So you can find uses of this as far back as the 1840s, probably earlier, if I dug a little bit.
Yeah.
Okay.
Okay. Well, cool. But I’m sure that after the War of Northern Aggression, as my grandmother from East Tennessee called it, I’m sure that that… But it is a southern term, right?
Sure, sure. Especially Alabama.
But you’re from North Carolina, right?
Well, but my grandmother was from Florella, Alabama, which is on the Florida-Alabama line.
Florella.
Florella.
Florella.
Yeah. So that was where she was from.
Get in here, Florella.
Yeah. Well, thank you all for the information. I’ll make sure to go and check out the thriftiness of things. My grandmother was definitely thrifty, a child from the Depression, but she was a wonderful lady.
Well, thank you all very, very much.
Our pleasure. Thanks for calling, Skipper.
Thanks, Skipper. Have a great day.
Thank you. Bye-bye.
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