By Edie Everette / Herald Forum
Have you ever swept a penny into a dustpan then paused and thought, “I’ll just toss it in the bin with the dry leaf bits, dust balls and dog hair because it isn’t worth the trouble?”
Well, if you have, I’d recommend reading Betty Smith’s 1943 semi-autobiographical novel “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.” In it, the Nolan family is financially poor because the father is an alcoholic who has trouble holding down his job as a singing waiter and the mother does odd jobs to provide for the family. One day, young daughter Francie and her mother nail an empty coffee can to the closet floor, a container with a slit in the top where they save pennies and other coins.
Ever since reading that book, I have not been able to throw a penny away.
I used to pick up pennies for luck. Then, for a while, when I saw one on a sidewalk or street, I became altruistic and left it there thinking, “I’ve got gobs of luck, let someone else have some!” After that short-lived humanitarian spell, I began picking them up again: “Forget the others,” I’d think, “they probably don’t even know about the good luck part of picking up pennies. Besides, I deserve that luck my dang self!”
I once worked in a Seattle art gallery. An artist who exhibited there — quite talented and handsome — was rich, or his partner was. He would probably have thrown handfuls of pennies in the trash after reading “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.” He never took change back from transactions and even dollar bills were a nuisance. He didn’t like the clutter of little denominations, five-dollar bills being the smallest he would tolerate taking up space in his wallet.
Pennies are the underdog of the moolah world.
A bright penny was on my worktable the other day, one minted in 2024. It was so dazzling that I picked it up to look at it. Abraham Lincoln was there showing his good side. Lincoln, my mother’s favorite. A president who annoyed official visitors during meetings by allowing his young children to climb all over him. A depressive who toughed it out before Prozac and navigated our country through an impossible time, a time when soldiers stuck lit candles in their gun barrels to seek a strategic location during the night.
My niece installed a penny floor in her bathroom. She is handy that way, and very funny. Once, when our family was staying at the coast, it was my turn to make breakfast that included pancakes. When I asked her if she wanted some she said, “Pancakes are not a part of my life journey.”
“Using pennies for flooring is generally not illegal in the U.S.,” says the internet, “as long as the pennies are not fraudulently altered or defaced to change their value.”
While sitting and writing this at my little store, two handsome brothers walked in. I asked them if they had anything to say about pennies. Dominic, the older brother, told me that if you find a penny that is heads up, it will bring good luck, but if tails up, the luck it brings will be bad. Then both Dominic and his brother Luke told me that whenever they find a penny that is tails up, they place it heads up in a strange and different place.
I was astonished at the brothers found-a-penny-solution and told them that they were “dreamy,” because that is the type of thing you may say when you are an older dame lucky enough to meet a pair of strapping young men.
Edie Everette is an artist and writer living in the Snohomish County’s Sky Valley.
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