Like Apple’s small towns, Tenino, Washington, has been hit hard by his financial best friend through THE covert COVID. Residents like Laurie Mahlenbrei, an unsevered school bus driver, are struggling. “It was hard,” she says. “I mean, I washed windows, rubbed floors, knocked down trees, cut grass, all I can too for a dollar.”

But something insurmountable is happening in this city of 1,800 other Americans. The tenine city government is doing everything it can to support other Americans like Mahlenbrei, not with a check or, perhaps, with a debit card, but with or with a lot of wood.

“Occasionally, I meet a cashier who has never taken it before,” Mahlenbrei said. “But it’s just an explosion, you know? I mean, I pay for food with something historic, you know?”

That’s right: the town is printing its own money, $10,000 worth, on thin sheets of wood that can only be spent in Tenino.

And this is never the first time. In fact, the city issued its first wooden coin in 1931, the Great Depression.

Tenino’s COVID-era wooden coin is published in a similar machine, a Chandler-Price tray press from 1890.

Loren Ackerman, president of the Tenino Depot Museum, is the only user in the city who knows how to interpret the 19th-century device that published the motto of the Era of Tenine’s Depression. “You’re a great friend who prints money,” correspondent Luke Burbank said.

In wood!

Is it completely legal? “We think so,” said Wayne Fournier, firefighter and mayor of Tenino. “We haven’t been called yet! Maybe after this story, they’ll call us and let us know that we’d rather stop.”

Fournier said that when he began the assumption of starting to print wooden “scripts,” as it’s called, he had to do some research. “I started by Google-searching what currencies they are, it started as undeniable as that,” he said with a smile. “What is the concept, what is currency, what is fiat currency, verifies and perceives these things and perceives them, you know, data is available on the Internet.”

“You are the mayor of this city, ” said Burbank. “The city used to make its own currency when times are tough, and yet when you’re going to do it yourself, you have to write, Google and find out how it works.”

“Yes.’ What is the economy? Fournier said with a smile.” I’m a fireman. I’m an accountant, you know, I guess I’m mayor, you know? “

Wooden coins have attracted the world’s attention. But not that someone is a joke or a public trick, it’s been much more than that for other Americans like Laurie Mahlenbrei.

“It was a gift from heaven, you know?” She. “I mean, I can also buy things that I can’t buy either because, like I said, I get rid of the big apple-type paintings that I can also get. I can also buy some food.”

When Burbank stayed with her, Mahlenbrei was buying groceries with his wooden money. But she may also have paid her water bill with her, have her prescriptions prescribed at Hedden’s, the city’s pharmacy, or she can also enjoy a delicious meal at Don Juan’s Mexican cuisine.

“As humans, when things like this happen, we go into survival mode, and we start to think, “Well, those are my expenses. Can I have dinner at the restaurant? Probably not,” said Marcelos Angeles Martinez, whose circle of angels is the owner of Don Juan.” So I think the coins allowed other Americans to have that. And even other Americans who probably have fewer friends prefer it, who are looking to do their grocery shopping over and over weeks and who can’t do it, I think the wooden coins have helped their friends a lot.”

Currencies also help Tenino companies when they expose expenses with the city’s normal currencies.

With the attention the coins receive, whether one of the banknotes is numbered, signed and includes a rough Latin translation of the word “We are looking for this”, creditors have to choose not to do so, in the hope of having it in their hands.

But good luck getting Laurie Mahlenbrei’s share: “I was presented up to $300 for that,” he said. “But chances are you won’t sell it, because in the first place, it’s meant to be here in the community, to be an important community. He intended to give us a seasoning for us and for business. And secondly, it’s too much laughter to spend! “

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History produced through Antho Laudato. Editorial: Emanuele Secci.