Near the end of Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemtion, Red finds a package left for him by Andy. Part of the note included said "Remember that hope is a good thing, Red, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies."
I asked King to write something to that effect in my book, and the result you see is what SK wrote.
When Red finds the package, there are twenty brand new $50 bills in an envelope. I figured that they very well could have been from 1969.