Find a Penny, pick her up,
All day long you’ll have good luck.
I like pennies. Even ones that aren’t canine. Whenever people talk about doing away with pennies as a currency, I feel myself resisting the idea. I guess I’m getting old and unwilling to change. (Get it–change. Ha.)
A touristy thing I’ve done over the years is to drop a penny into one of those machines that flattens pennies and imprints them with names or illustrations of a particular place. So when I look at them, I can remember walking on Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco with Tom to enjoy the sea lions. Sitting at Cafe Du Monde with Lynne or my Saints and Sinners friends. Going to aquariums in New Orleans with Tom’s family, in Gulfport with my sister and mother, in downtown Houston with Steve and Jim or my sister and Tim. Ordering ice cream or coffee or candy at La King’s in Galveston–on different trips with Rhonda, Lindsey, and Tom, or with my family including Aaron, who also got a penny pressed. Going to Moody Gardens in Galveston with Tom and Steve C and cracking up at penguin antics. Being on the Strand in Galveston on too many trips with my sister (and sometimes her friends) to count; with Steve C, Jim, and Tim when they all got goofy trying on cowboy hats; or with Lynne and Craig and Tom, including one December when we went to Dickens on The Strand and Craig nearly froze me to death driving home with the window open so we could all stay awake. I have pennies from Houston’s Museum of Natural Science and Johnson Space Center. From the time after my mother’s memorial service, there are memories of when I went to the Clinton Presidential Museum in Little Rock just after my sister and I met her daughter and family in Gatlinburg–not to mention the time Tom’s entire family surprised his mother on her birthday when she arrived in Gatlinburg to find us all there in a huge house we rented.
Even though the pennies commemorate the places, what I really remember are the people who shared those times with me–or Tom and me. We may be busy people, but we find time–or make it–for who and what we value. That’s not luck–it’s love.
We have one of those penny press machines here at Kew. I’d send one over, but I guess that would defeat the object?
You could still send one over! Whenever I saw it, I’d remember all your beautiful photos of Kew that I’ve enjoyed through the years.
Great mementos, but I have never seen a penny press in my entire life or I’d probably have a jar full of pressed pennies.
Now that I’ve told you, you may start seeing them everywhere.
sweet post…. and a very sweet picture of Penny…
She’s such an adorable girl. Thank you!
What other memento can you get for fifty cents AND carry a lifetime’s worth in your pocket?
Thanks for sharing!
You’re welcome, and you’re right. Good memories at a bargain!
I’d never even HEARD of a penny press until my granddaughter showed me a penny she’d had squashed somewhere in Cape Canaveral.
I don’t know where I noticed my first one. Maybe in Galveston.