Read time: 4 min.

Back in high school, the corner of Kilgore and Nebo in suburban Yorktown felt like my second home. I took every Subway shift I could get and got to know the whole block. With my right foot firmly in the sandwich shop, my left wandered between gas pumps, fast food runs, and whatever else the day called for nearby! One day, back at work, I found a dollar bill that belonged to my corner as well. 

Many years ago, Nebo Road’s intersection with State Road 32 was pretty sleepy. An iron bridge crossed the White River just north and led to a no-man’s land between a rural county road and the old Yorktown-Gaston Pike. By the time I was able to acknowledge it, though, the place was much busier. 

When I landed a job at the Subway nearby, the whole corner was buzzing. A Village Pantry, an auto service center, the Friendly Package liquor store, and the remains of what looked to be an old Dog N’ Suds drive-in were staples along the north side of the road. 

The south side was home to a McDonald’s that used to be Hardees, an animal hospital, and Subway. I was too young to venture into the liquor store across the street, but I kept the Village Pantry in business with all the fountain pops and fill-ups I could afford. When I got sick of free subs, I’d head over to McDonald’s for a Filet-O-Fish. Sometimes, we’d trade. I never had a reason to visit the animal hospital or the auto shop, but I made friends with the people who did as I worked the night shift at Subway.

I’d just made a $5 footlong and was ringing it up when the computer froze the sale since there was too much cash in the register. I had to drop some into the safe, much to the annoyance of the woman waiting to pay for her footlong. As I counted the bills, one caught my eye: a crumpled dollar stamped with “Where’s George?” in red and blue ink. Curious, I slipped it into my pocket and replaced it with a dollar from my wallet.

I was years away from owning a smartphone, but I somehow T9’d my way to the website that little stamp pointed me toward. “Where’s George?” turned out to be a bill-tracking site: you typed in the serial number. Assuming others had too, you could see where your dollar had been! I crossed my fingers for something wild: Zanzibar, New Glarus, maybe even Turkmenistan. Instead, the results were a little closer to home. A lot closer.

Rather than some epic journey across multiple continents, my dollar had taken the most hilariously local route possible. It bounced from Subway to McDonald’s, presumably as change. It made a pit stop at the liquor store, fueled up at the Village Pantry, and somehow ended up back at Subway.

For more than two years, that dollar had done nothing but circle the same intersection. It never once left the corner of Nebo and Kilgore! George was caught in a small-town loop, making the rounds without ever really going anywhere.

I’d never expected a single dollar to capture the spirit of that corner so perfectly. Just like me, it circled the same few places and lived out a routine within a couple hundred feet. There was something oddly comforting about that! 

That world expanded when I graduated high school and went away to help manage at Subway in Fort Wayne. That store has long-since closed, but the one I started at near the intersection is still there. As I write this, a footlong Chicken Bacon Ranch with chipotle sauce sounds good! If I go, I’ll be sure to pay in cash. Maybe I’ll find that dollar again and see where the past sixteen years have taken it.