Some Two-Bit Thoughts

Here we go into the last lap of that two-bit contest to choose the design for one side of the new quarter to honor California in 2005. A commission has chosen 20 semifinalists for an Internet poll (www.caquarter.ca.gov). Good luck to Gov. Gray Davis in avoiding controversy and making an apt final choice of a symbol in a contest that will cost taxpayers 400,000 quarters in an awful budget year.

In case you doubt the hot-potato-ness of selecting 50 state designs for America’s workhorse coin, check the layers of screenings and approvals required at state and federal levels. They commemorate politicians’ desire for political cover.

Some states are potentially simple. Maple syrup in Vermont. Rudy Giuliani for New York. A Confederate flag for South Carolina. Belching smokestacks for Michigan. Florida’s could simply show a retirement home. The Texas quarter could have a pro sports team owner with his mouth wide open. A mosquito for Minnesota and a dust cloud for Oklahoma. Mississippi’s could show someone learning to read. Washington state’s might depict a downpour and Oregon’s a tree falling down.

But California is unusually tough because the place is so diverse, the governor’s first name is Gray and many residents came from somewhere else with their own image of this chosen place. What, for instance, would a convertible mean to Northern Californians? The chosen 20 contain common themes: miners, bridges, chunks of celluloid, mountains and lots of trees not pruned to fit around power lines. One design particularly popular among USC grads shows a Trojan woman carrying a gold nugget while apparently kneeling on a bruin. A stunningly simple sleeper candidate renders stylistic waves beneath a brilliant sun. That one might not make Barstow feel included, but hot sand doesn’t reproduce well on coins.

Sadly, the protective screening committee didn’t consider other worthy candidates. A motionless freeway. An empty Rose Bowl being surveyed by NFL executives. A scowling Al Davis with a $-sign eye patch would mean something all over. Every Californian could relate to a cell phone beneath a bright sun, an irrigation ditch full of finagled water or a coin covered with power lines. (But how to show the lines are only half full?)

When Davis picks five finalists this month, he’s unlikely to choose a design showing a governor shaking hands with lobbyists. But how about Mickey Mouse, sunglasses on his forehead, sipping a latte in a director’s chair by the beach while a bear pans for gold near a big bridge linking a redwood grove and Joshua trees? The coin would need to be huge, but, hey, we’re California.