In praise of the diminutive penny

For many of us, the Great Depression was a penniless, dirt-poor society – a penny-picking, penny pincher society. I still bend over to pick up a near worthless penny at 91 years of age. There is only one time in my life that I didn’t retrieve a penny from the street and that was because it was mired in tar. In hard times, I would have dug it out. When I go to a fast food restaurant, I still look on the ground for loose change.

Recently I spotted a penny at the drive-through window of a big chain restaurant, so I got out of my car and picked it up. The clerk at the window said it belonged to the store. So I threw it back down and said, if that is the case you can come out and pick it up. In her eyes finders keepers didn’t apply.

During World War II, the lowly penny went to war. Due to a shortage of copper during the critical World War II year of 1943, the Treasury Department resorted to the use of zinc-coated steel for the penny. The tenure of the zinc-coated penny lasted only for 1943.

The penny always played a big part in my life. In 1940, 1942 and 1944, I was a newspaper carrier for the Youngstown Vindicator. A single penny was my profit on a 3-cent daily newspaper. My profit on a Sunday newspaper was 3 cents on a 10-cent Sunday newspaper. Tips were unheard of, because every penny was budgeted in a household.

In 1943, while in the U.S. Navy and stationed at Navy Pier Chicago, I bought an elongated penny with the entire Lord’s Prayer on it. I carried it with me for the entire 33 months of my naval service throughout travel. In the United States and Asiatic Pacific combat theater of action, it may have helped to keep me out of harm’s way over thousands of miles.

Michael J. Lacivita is a Youngstown retiree and member of the Ohio Senior Citizens Hall of Fame and the Ohio Veterans Hall of Fame.