Road Pennies

I pick up all the pennies I find along the road.

It’s a simple superstition: Don’t distain the penny, and you’ll never be down to your last one.

 

 

When I started biking to work four years ago, I would often run into penny massacres, dozens of pennies flung recklessly from automobile ashtrays. Talk about bad karma.

 

 

These penny troves were troublesome because--as everybody knows--you can only take the heads-up pennies. The tails-up pennies must be flipped over and left for the next person. Concentration is required as one works across a field of pennies so that a newly flipped penny is not taken in error.

 

 

At first I kept my pennies in a large jar. It seemed I would soon have enough for a new bicycle.

 

 

But a penny jar is really only suitable for pocket pennies. Not road pennies. They start as clones but the world changes them. They become beautiful.