🚀 go-pugleaf

   All this talk of cow checks reminded me of an article in "More
of The Straight Dope," a veritable font of off-the-wall information.
Here - it is.

  Today, again, I found myself out shopping without my checkbook.
Only this time, I vaguely recalled once hearing that a person can write
a check on any old piece of paper.  Is or was this true, or is my
memory failing?  If true, what are the requirements as to what must
be written, besides the amount and your signature - account number? 
Bank?  Am I paying for blank checks I don't really need?  
                                           -- Jon G., Laurel, Maryland

  Don't throw out those puppies yet, Jack.  It's true you can write
a "negotiable instrument," which is bank talk for a valid check, on just
about anything.  According to the Uniform Commercial code, the body
of law that governs these things, all you have to include are the name
of the payee, the dollar amount, the name of your bank, your signature,
the date, and some suitable words of conveyance, such as "pay to the
order of."  You don't need the account number or the bank ID number you
find on preprinted checks.

  The trick is that you have to find somebody willing to _accept_ such
a check.  Merchants and the like are free to reject any sort of 
payment they don't cotton to, checks included.  Needless to say, if
you try to write a check on the back of an old grocery list, the average
checkout clerk is going to tell you to take a hike.  However, if the
clerk does accept it, the bank will honor it.
  Charlie Rice, a columnist for the old _This Week_ Sunday newspaper 
supplement, once wrote about various goofy checks that had been
successfully cashed over the years.  Here are a few of the choicer
examples:

    + Eben Grumpy of Iowa was a little slow in paying John Sputter
$30 he owed him. (The names are genuine, Rice claimed.) Sputter
threatened to sue, so Grumpy painted a check on a door and dropped
it on him from a third-story window next time Sputter came over.  A
court ruled the door was legal payment.
    + Albert Haddock of England once paid his taxes by whitewashing
a check for 26 pounds, 10 shillings on the side of a cow.  The
check was ruled legal.
    + A participant in an arc-welding contest in Cleveland (Ohioans
obviously know how to have a good time) won first prize for a steel
check that he hand-lettered.  The check was cashed by officials at
a cooperative bank.  "The canceling holes," Charlie says, "were applied
by a bank guard with a submachine gun."  Right.

  Many nonstandard checks are publicity stunts, such as the 21-by-7 foot
check cashed for a charity drive in Fort Worth.  Most others are
intended as nuisances.  As a rule, I would venture to say, checks in the
latter category get sent through the mail, for the obvious reason that
they're a lot harder for the payee to reject.  Just about any large
company can tell you stories about comedians who send in checks written
on underwear, bricks, and other inconvenient media.  One common stunt
is to write your annual tax check to the IRS on a shirt (the shirt off
your back, get it?) Swiftian satire it ain't, but I'm sure some find
it amusing.
-------------------
These and other non-PostScript Q-n-A sessions can be found within
"The Straight Dope," and "More of The Straight Dope," written by Cecil
Adams.  Get it!  (Reprinted without permission!)

"Nice owl...must be expensive"
x87hansen10@gw.wmich.edu