“How is life treating you?” a friendly caller asked, just checking in with me.
It wasn’t. I had to pay for everything. And nothing cost 5 or 10 cents.
My moth-er and my aunts often referenced Five and Dime Stores, also known as variety stores, which were retail stores that offered a wide selection of low-priced merchandise.
Frank Woolworth opened the country’s first five-and-dime store in Lancaster, Pa., in 1879, called the “Great Five Cent Store.” The store sold items for five and ten cents. It became the F. W. Woolworth Company.
There was a convenient Woolworth’s in my life when I was a boy. I called it the Dime Store. The five of the five and ten cents had gotten the boot. A neighbor called it Woolie’s, adding, “Why pay $10 for something when you can get it for $9.98 at the Dime Store?”
There was a convenient Penney’s, but nothing sold for a penny. That store chain was named after James Cash Penney.
My mother thought the dime store was a good place to know. It offered everything from goldfish to egg whips to gravy strainers. She bought an electric blanket there. It had three settings: rare, medium and well done.
I bring up the Five and Dime and the Dime Store, so I could write about pennies. The U.S. Mint has been told to stop making pennies.
Why did the chicken cross the road? To pick up a penny someone had flung from a car window.
“How far do you have to set your clock back to live in your world?” That question was directed to me because, in an impressive fit of optimism, and being of nearly sound mind, I became that chicken picking up a penny from the ground. See a penny, pick it up, and all day long, you’ll have good luck, unless you injure your back picking up the penny. Imagine my surprise when I discovered it was a 1943-D Lincoln Bronze Wheat Penny worth $2.3 million. That’s why I pick up pennies. I raised a hand, expecting a high-five, but none materialized. I was daydreaming. The truth is, the penny I plucked from the pavement was a 2011 Lincoln penny with no errors (not off-center or double-died), but easily worth one cent.
Pennies have been important in my life, even though I’ve never worn penny loafers, which got their name after it became fashionable for students to place a penny in a slit on the shoe for good luck or as change for payphones. That was BC – Before Cellphones.
I’ve tossed pennies into fountains to make wishes. Some of those wishes came true.
I played a slot machine once. It was a penny machine. It took me a long time to lose $1, but I did it. That memory still stings.
My self-directed investment fund is a jar of pennies. I cling to that raft.
Pennies promoted peaceful protest. I was behind an angry customer who didn’t say a word, but paid for his meal with pennies. He hadn’t been given the peanut butter he’d ordered for his toast.
Countless people have offered me a penny for my thoughts, but I haven’t received a single penny. “A nickel for your thoughts” sounds a bit pricey.
When I need to go to the bank, it means my pickle jar is filled with pennies.
I enjoy hearing Louis Prima singing, “And every time it rains, it rains pennies from heaven. Shooby dooby. Don’t you know each cloud contains pennies from heaven? Shooby dooby. You’ll find your fortune falling all over town. Be sure that your umbrella is upside down.”
When angels miss you, they toss pennies down to cheer you up, to make a smile out of your frown.
Without pennies, a change in the weather would be just nickels, dimes and quarters.
Even though dollar stores are on their way to becoming $10-and-$20 stores, no one should die penniless.
What do you call a broke Santa? He isn’t penniless. He’s Saint Nickle Less.
As Gene Pitney could have sung in “A Town Without Pity,” “No, it isn’t very pretty what a town without a penny can do.”
Perhaps a penny earned isn’t worth the effort.
But saving pennies makes cents.
Photo by Al Batt
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