When the Missus and I do our walks we invariably find a penny or two lying in our path. We're not so well off that we don't stop to pick them up when we see them. The type and denomination of the change that we find on our walk has been our informal gauge of how well the local economy is doing: when we find a penny we know that folks are doing a bit better than getting by and feel that picking up a dropped penny is too much trouble.
When we start finding nickles, dimes, and quarters we know folks have more money that sense and feel that dropped change is too much effort to retrieve. We used to find those denominations fairly regularly up to the crash of '08. After that for a long time we were lucky to find a loose penny.
Recently I was walking to the train station from work one hot afternoon when I spied a penny on the sidewalk so I stooped down to pick it up. Then I noticed another..and another...and another until I had picked up 88 of them. They were scattered on the sidewalk and the driveway of a fast food place. I saw there were more but I had to make it to the train to get home.
The next morning I stopped at the same place and picked up another 10. 98 pennies for the taking!
I wonder how they got there. did some small child lose them on the way to the eatery? Did some slob empty his ash tray out the window only to dump all of his pennies too?
Into the penny bank they go!
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I recently found a $5 bill while walking in our neighborhood! I felt awfully guilty about taking it, thinking a child might have lost it. But it sure was a treat for me!
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