When we were kids, we had many uses for a penny. Of course, these days, I do not believe anyone has any use for a penny except to be aggravated when they get some in change. The last I knew, there is 2 cents worth of copper in a penny. With the price of copper out of sight these days, it is probably more than that now. Only the federal government would produce something that is more expensive than its worth. With that by way of introduction, let us look at some of the uses we had for pennies during my kid years.

 

For a penny, we could get a handful of salted Spanish peanuts from a vending machine at Heckleman's Sohio Station. If no one was around and we didn't have a penny, we found that if we repeatedly turned the dial mechanism back and forth, a few peanuts would fall out of the chute. Of course, back in the 1950's a penny could buy quite a lot for a kid. At least that's what I've heard. You don't think I'm that old do you? I stand on the Fifth Amendment on that one. Of course, Tim and I would always take something normal and innocuous and find ways to use it abnormally and often precariously. We certainly did this with pennies. We had many uses for pennies far beyond just spending them. I shall now explain some of our more interesting uses for pennies.

 

One of the most fun things we used pennies for was to put on railroad tracks and wait for a train to come along. The weight of the train would smooth and expand them if they didn't fall off before the whole train ran over them. Since we didn't live near any tracks, this event was rather rare. The major time we indulged in this hobby was when we went to Lakewood to visit our family friends, the Buckleys. Gene worked for the railroad and interestingly enough, he lived right next to a railroad track! I thought this phenomenon was very interesting, indeed. In fact, he was the one who introduced this practice to us. Whenever we visited them, Gene would give us some pennies to be flattened on the tracks. This was a win win for the adults and us kids since we were out of their hair while they visited and we had a blast in the meantime. It took us quite a while to master the art of the penny remaining on the track during the time the whole train ran over it. You can try this, but it takes a lot of "training".

 

Pennies were also used in those days to put in penny loafers. Our grandmother "Ollie" always had three pennies in the bottom of each shoe. When we asked her why, she said it was good luck. She was very superstitious and I have written previous stories describing some of her most unusual superstitions. I wonder if they still make penny loafers these days, and if so, do people still put pennies in the tongue. I don’t usually look at people's shoes, but I have observed in a cursory matter that it is very rare to see anyone these days wearing regular shoes since they all wear "running shoes". Except me of course, since I am always found in my ubiquitous boots. As a matter of fact, I don't even own a pair of "running shoes". Which leads me to one of the great paradoxes in life. Oh never mind, I'll write another story about that subject one of these days. I must not allow myself to get off on one of my infamous sidetracks, although I previously did mention railroad tracks.

 

Tim, Len H., and I used to put a penny on the end of an upright .22 rifle barrel and shoot it. The penny would make a cool "whizzing" sound as it headed into the sky and out of sight at a high rate of speed. I think Len dreamed this up which was unusual because Tim and/or I usually thought up cool things like this. We also used pennies as targets for our rifles and pistols. We had two small nails in several of our fence posts and they held a penny that rested on them. Len and Tim could almost always hit the penny, but I was not the expert shooter they were. Even if I had put a silver dollar on the post, only a chance shot would have hit any part of it. I'm sure this was due to my rifle not being "zeroed in". More than likely Tim and/or Len "jimmied" the sights so my dead eyed aim would be off. That's the only possible explanation I could have for my poor marksmanship performance in those days. At least that's the story I've always espoused. Between the three of us, I think from about ages 12 to 17 that we shot up more ammunition than they did in the Spanish-American War. I don't shoot as much as I used to because some of the firearms I have use very expensive shells. At least when I do get into the shooting mood, the targets are cheap because I can use the same penny for weeks J

 

In the old days before circuit breakers were invented, people sometimes used a penny behind a blown fuse. This was necessary if there were no spare fuses, which in our case was the usual situation.

 

Pennies also came in handy for screwdrivers, although dimes were better. If I needed a screwdriver for a small slotted screw and didn't have a dime, I used 10 pennies J Our Uncle Ned used to collect old pennies when he was a kid and after Tim and I discovered the dusty old coin books in the back of his closet, we would regularly take some to buy peanuts at Heckleman's Sohio Station. I wonder now how many valuable pennies ended up in that peanut machine. Oh, well, at least the peanuts were good.

 

One game, which I may have invented in my youth, was to line up pennies on a flat surface touching each other and shoot a penny at the end of the line and just the last penny on the end of the line would move forward. The next time you have a lot of pennies and a lot of time to waste, try it. You will no doubt be amazed how many pennies you can line up and still have the last penny move. I assume it has to do with the law of kinetic energy or something. As long as you're wasting time with penny experiments, try lining up the pennies in a "V" formation. When a penny hits the base penny at the bottom of the "V", both pennies at the top of the "V" will move out. I call it penny shuffleboard. I don't know what scientific importance my discovery holds, but at least it's an interesting way to kill time while waiting at the doctor's office or in line at the bank.

 

Well, I hope this story made "cents" to all of you. (Oooooh, there I go again.)