Gunnison Man Building Mint

(Baldwin Star-Herald  –  February 10, 2015)) As the sun comes up over another spectacular, albeit chilly morning, Abner Silt can be found hammering shingles, laying carpet and securing his 300-year-old Galician safe adjacent to the old mill here.
These are the finishing touches on a yearlong project aimed at relieving the complexities of slow earning months that ravage the local economy.
“We have all waited long enough for the federals to rescue rural America by building ample infrastructure and creating jobs,” said Silt. “I have been unemployed since 2006 and I’m running short on canned goods.”
Silt’s mint has so far been ignored by the U.S. Treasury Department, an agency responsible for collecting taxes and issuing currency.
Irresponsible money management in such locales as Libya and Syria has dictated a severe run on nickels and dimes, leaving the dollar out to dry. Now the Internal Revenue Service is set to send military advisors to help implement the enforcement of income tax compliance in countries where the annual income is less than a plumber makes on a Sunday call.
“Have at it, I say,” said a defiant Silt. “Let them intervene over there. We always seem to do fine when they are over there and not here.”
The new mint will specialize in quarters and fifty-cent pieces with Silt ‘s face featured on one side and a bugling elk on the other. The strategy is to avoid printing bills over $20 so as not to tip off federal banking inspectors that have been pleasantly scarce around here since the bulk of the gold mines closed in the 70s.
“We prefer to stay small and slide through the cracks,” explained Silt. “The average Congressman spends more money on lunch that we see pass through Baldwin all winter long. It’s not that we’re bitter. It’s more like we are sick and tired of rhetoric and promises from a bunch of inattentive scalawags, born rich and riding on the greed train.”
Dubbed the Silt Mint, the money factory will begin production by the end of the month and reportedly is set to employ an estimated 600 persons in the Gunnison Valley. All currency will be guaranteed by the International Alfalfa Standard, which is a step up from the dollars to donuts criterion currently glossed over in Washington. As a failsafe, Silt’s cash is backed by the Rocky Mountain Firewood Reserve Act along with the Elk in the Freezer Edict, adopted way back in 1935.
Whether or not the US dollar will continue to be accepted in transactions here is a good question at the time of this writing. An exchange rate has yet to materialize and shopkeepers are uncertain as to the benefits of giving change in the new legal tender.
If Silt and his supporters are correct in their assessment, tourists will flock to Western Colorado to purchase the new money as keepsake or trinket to take home. In the face of shortages Silt will not print money to prop up the brain-disadvantaged fallacy that everything is kosher if one has some folding money in his pocket.
Play money for locals and souvenirs for tourists…Sound crazy? Kind of like talking about a balanced budget by 2015, heh?
A majority of Gunnison County residents polled are observing the development with guarded enthusiasm. Local banks did not return our phone calls regarding the breakthrough. – Kashmir Horseshoe