No more ‘penny for your thoughts’: goodbye to our lowliest coin |
Well, friends, the time has finally come: No longer will pennies roll out of the US Mint in giddy profusion.
Last week, mourners marked (mocked?) the occasion at a funeral held, appropriately, outside the Lincoln Memorial.
Our change is a-changin’ as we dispense with the pence.
I vividly remember walking as a child on Kingsbridge Avenue in The Bronx one wintry day when my mother spotted a penny on the ground.
“Freddie, pick it up,” she said.
When I didn’t stoop to get it, she grew stern: “Pick it up now!” I did.
That’s when I learned that growing up during the Great Depression had deeply shaped my mother with a fear of economic hardship.
She became a well-trained bookkeeper, greatly valued by her........