Word: lire
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Most popular (and hardest to find) coin is the 500-lire piece, worth 80? in U.S. terms. Only last year, the government issued 5,000,000 new 500-lire coins commemorating the 700th anniversary of Dante's birth. Today the Dante coins have just about disappeared -except on the black market, where they bring as much as $4.80. For many Italian bank clerks, the first order of daily business is to roam the streets trying to scrounge coins from train stations and stores in return for bills; some banks are issuing 500-lire cashier's checks that pass...
...coin shortage? Treasury Minister Emilio Colombo blames it mostly on the increasing number of vending machines and on foreign tourists who, whether souvenir collecting or through negligence, leave the country with pockets ajangle with lire. The worst offender is undoubtedly the ordinary Italian. Still not confident about the long-range future of his country's economy, he is hoarding coins against the day when paper money loses its value. As one result, the piggy bank has become one of the hottest items in Italian stores...
...right, I'll make it 700,000 lire...
...Still pure? A million lire...
...pets: a dopey turtle that scrapes tediously around the living room, a hoarse parrot that mindlessly advises visitors to "take a blue crayon and color the sky." Then she lays a few cards on the table: she works in a feed store, owns her house outright, has 200,000 lire in the bank. Adolfo follows suit: he works in a bookstore and is dead broke...