So where do you hide your cash?

Grace Chewning never completely trusted banks.

Living through the Great Depression and the Wall Street crash of 1929 not only made her carefully watchdog her accounts, it drove her to hide money around her Roanoke home.

When she needed quick cash, she’d instruct her daughter to look in the pressure cooker, on top of drapery valances or under her dining room table pad for sums of money stashed in old church-offering envelopes.

She was my grandmother. We thought she was eccentric.

Apparently not.

People joke about stuffing a mattress full of money. In the survivalist blogosphere, it’s called the Bank of Sealy. So when some Richmond-area bank employees began telling us about occasional customers withdrawing money during the current economic turmoil, we decided to ask readers to share—anonymously, if they chose—some unusual places they or their relatives have stashed cash.

Several readers asked us not to write this story. “You’ll be telling thieves where to look for money,“ one caller said.

We plowed ahead because we’re pretty sure no burglar would have the time or inclination to search some of the bizarre places we’ve learned about.

Cathy Kirkland of Midlothian told us about her sister-in-law, Anne, who used to talk about hiding money in a “handbag” whenever she had extra cash.

“I heard her speak of this for years and years, as she made and sold window curtains from her home and was frequently paid in cash,“ Kirkland wrote. “She was hiding money from her husband so he wouldn’t spend it on fishing rods, tools, etc. This was ‘her money.‘ I always envisioned an old handbag stashed in the bottom of her bedroom closet, under a pile of junk.“

Years later, however, Kirkland found out she had misheard her crafty in-law. “She was actually saying, ‘I hide money in a ham bag. Her house was decorated country style, and hanging from her kitchen ceiling on big heavy wooden beams were pots and pans, dried tobacco, dried cotton branches and an Edwards Country Ham burlap bag—stuffed full of over $10,000.“

A Glen Allen reader is pretty sure his wife’s rainy-day stash is safe. “She stuffs an empty bag of peas full of money and puts it in the freezer,“ he said. “She seals the opening with glue.“

In that same frozen-assets vein, a woman e-mailed us about a co-worker who’s trying to save money to pay taxes this year. She stuffed money in a Stouffer’s French Bread Pizza box, taped it up and put it in the bottom of the freezer for safekeeping.

“Little did she know that her husband would come home to fix a pizza and come across her loot,“ the woman wrote. “Then she had to admit why she had money in her freezer. Her response to him was if the house burns down, the refrigerator was not going to burn with it.“

While cleaning out the freezer after his father’s death, Tim Lee and his siblings “discovered, to our surprise, $100 bills sandwiched between individually wrapped steaks. And we always thought he said he had it buried in cans in the backyard.“

Nancy from Chester said her mother puts a purse full of money in the bottom of her dirty-clothes hamper. A Richmond man said he rolls up money and sticks it in the socks in his dresser drawer. Another caller said he stashes a substantial amount of cash in the interior pockets of suit coats hanging in his closet.

Linda Davis of Varina recalled her mother’s next-door neighbor calling her to his death bed to tell her where he had hidden money. “He said, ‘Linda, go in the kitchen and look underneath the sink. Over to your right, you’ll see a pile of paint cans. The second one from the bottom—take that one out.‘“

When Davis removed the lid, she found what appeared to be plaster of Paris. Underneath was a stash of money. “He said he wanted me to tell his son in New Jersey where his money was when something happened to him,“ she said.

Barbara Snead, an instructional assistant at Goochland High School, recalled finding money in the hem of the living-room curtains at her late mother’s home. “She had been doing it for years and I never knew it,“ she said.

Snead decided it was a pretty ingenious hiding place. “What crook would stand by your window after he’s broken into your house, where he could be seen by neighbors?“

A cautionary note from one reader: Remember where you hide the dough. She stashed some money in a seemingly burglar-proof old pair of red tennis shoes. “But I forgot it was there and I gave them away,“ she lamented.

Books are a recurring theme when it comes to hiding money. When Don from Petersburg built a pair of bookcases for his home, he designed a hollow, removable baseboard for hiding money.

One of our Times-Dispatch librarians recalled a childhood playmate in Louisville whose mother lived through the Depression and was fearful of banks.

“Her mother always told her when she died to carefully go through her books, that’s all she would say.“ Not surprising, considering the woman and her husband were teachers and voracious readers.

When she died, the children discovered $100 and $50 bills stuck in the encyclopedia, dictionaries, romance novels and the Bible. The total approached $25,000.

Diane Carr of Montpelier said her grandma, Alida Peters, also hid money in a book—but “not those hollowed-out books the thieves are sure to spot,“ she wrote.

The emergency cash was tucked away, appropriately, in “How Green Was My Valley.“

Contact Julie Young at (804) 649-6732 or .