Editor’s Note:
Nola’s post on da Schegmann’s jogged many memories. I started to share one in a comment, but it grew out of hand, so it’s now a post.
When I worked at Martin Wine Cellar on Baronne Street while I was at UNO, I once went to the Schwegmann’s on Annunciation on my lunch hour to cash my paycheck. I remember they had these funky machines at the check cashing windows that would simultaneously take your picture and a picture of the check and your ID. While in line, I overheard a conversation between two black guys in the line for the window next to the one I was in. It went something like this:
Hey-what you doin’ here?
I gots my check, gonna cash it.
Oh yeah, check money is O.K., but dey ain’t no money like dat cash money!
Yeah you rite!
At the time I just thought it was kind of funny, a redundancy-based colloquialism, that a part of society saw fit to categorize wealth into “check money” and “cash money.”
So, years later, when exposed to the NOLA hip-hop stylings of Juvenile and the other Cash Money Millionaires, I felt I had been exposed to some inside knowledge, where I, a most pasty white un-hip and un-hip-hop dude, knew exactly what was meant by the words “Cash Money.”
P.S. There was some other slang I was exposed to riding the Public Service bus to school. Anyone heard of “silver dimes” and “case quarters?”
Update: As Ender’s Urban Dictionary links point out, “silver dimes” and “case quarters” refer to the 10-cent and 25-cent piece coins. These things I learned riding the Public Service bus through “bad neighborhoods” going to school from Algiers to Uptown.
So, if someone axed (see here for more on that) you for a “silver dime” and you gave them two nickels or ten pennies, or one nickel and five pennies, you would be incorrect. Same with a “case quarter.”
case quarter:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=case+quarter
silver dime:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=silver+dime
😀
To my generation a silver dime, thin dime, and round dime meant the same thing-just to distinguish it from other forms of 10 cents. Of course ,then the dimes were probably made of silver!
I remember those machines. Damn, I’m old. I remember the smell of the Westbank Schwegmann’s, too. Matter of fact, with all this talk I can smell it right now. It isn’t a pleasant smell at all, but it is our smell.
Heh heh. I’ve heard the term “cash money,” but never “check money.” Nor have I heard “case quarter,” but have heard “silver dime” many times. (I remember back when dimes actually were made of silver.)
My Pawpaw used to save silver dollars and silver dimes. He’d give his grandchildren each a silver dollar on their birthdays, and he accumulated the silver dimes. We found a cache of them after his death.
My Granny used the phrase silver dimes to mean the pre-196? ones that were made of silver. Those were the only ones that could be cooked with the cabbage for good luck on New Year’s Day. Without the silver, there was no luck.
Oh and we’d get silver dollars for birthdays or anniversaries. My Uncle gave me an unnamed number of silver dollars (Sacajawea & Susan B.) for a milestone birthday last year.