I went to the drugstore to get my wife some cold medicine. We had been to see Mystic River, which is indeed in full effect. Anyway we went home to relieve the sitter, blessed be she, and I ran out to get some cold medicine because Carol has got a monster flu. And I pulled out change to fill out the bill -- a couple pennies, so I could get a quarter back instead of two dimes and three pennies.
And there in my hand was a wheatie! A 1944 penny, with the wheat sheaf design on the "tails" face. I told the clerk, "My father kept his pennies in a red cardboard box. And one day he told me, if I would count them and stack them, then put them in rolls, then I could have half. I made, like, $5,00, and found him 75 or 80 wheaties, and a few Indian heads too." And I remember too that two of them were zinc, from World War II, when copper was going into the ships and the tanks and the jeeps. And a couple were Indian head pennies.
Those I think he went ahead and put straight in his sock drawer. I keep an Indian head penny in the ashtray of my car because I got it as change once at a fast food restaurant in the drive through. I keep meaning to send it to him. It's in with the rest of my change. But I look through my pennies before I give them to anybody in a drive-through, and if I see the Indian head, I think of my father.
He's alive and healthy and well. No melancholy. I just think of him, is all.