The little quarter that cried

I don’t really want to alienate an entire state, and I mean disrespect neither to the blind nor to Patty Duke Astin (and while I loved John Astin in “The Addams Family” and his one-shot on “Mad About You”, can you imagine what kind of party that marriage must have been?), but I just have to say this about the Alabama state quarter:

Helen Keller?

Now, I didn’t love the New York quarter, but it’s hard to even choose what to put on a license plate in this state, because there are so many choices: one of the 4700 landmarks of New York City, the Catskills (Rip Van Winkle?), the Adirondacks, the Erie Canal, two Great Lakes and one Niagara Falls to connect them. Finger Lakes, High Peaks, Revolutionary battlefields, Washington’s headquarters, and, for the contrary among us, most of the battles of the War of 1812 (Plattsburgh’s burning!). So, our choices were difficult, somebody went with the Statue of Liberty just to give New Jersey a poke in the nose, and off to the mint we went.

Now just imagine how that meeting must have gone in Alabama. “What’ve we got?”
“Well, the Gulf, but it’s hard to portray tides in silver relief. Muscle Shoals sound studio, that’s a good one. Picture of a microphone or something. Then we got that big Alabama Shakespeare Festival, but I don’t know how a picture of some guy in breeches would go over out there. We got golf, lots of golf. And we got Auburn, maybe a picture of some ivy. ”
“Hey, how about that Courteney Cox? She’s cute as a button, and she’s from Birmingham.”
“Now you may be onto something there, Cooter. Somebody famous. We’ll have the only quarter with a person on it.”
“Ohio’s got John Glenn, but you can’t see it’s him in that space suit.”
“How about Tallulah Bankhead?”
“How about Harper Lee?”
“You kiddin’ me? Why don’tcha just say Truman Capote. I always had my doubts about you, Cooter…”
“Well, ya know, there’s always Helen Keller. . . .”
At least they didn’t go with Zelda Fitzgerald.