Setanta - I know exactly what you mean about collecting discarded soda bottles for the deposits. I have many pleasant memories of doing that as a kid. There was a golf course in our area, and we would also check in the bushes and undergrowth along the fence for lost golf balls. We could get a whole dime for a ball if it was in good enough shape.
I really think our kids today are missing out by having too many things given to them, instead of how we had to scrounge around for pennies and dimes.
Despite all the horrors attendant upon growing up these days, Jim, i think they also miss out from a lack of long periods of unsupervised activity. Basically, we were turned loose, or even driven from the house if our presence were annoying, and we spent a great deal of our time alone or in the company of other children, no adults.
By the by, Jim, i like your "no pain no gain" tag line there . . . that's a good one . . .
Joe Nation, the fact that you remember not only the girl, but the movie and the snacks makes me think that you spent your money wisely!
Ahhh the good old days of being forced out the door with nothing but your name and a warning to be home by dark.....
Hi Jim!
I think there is still some money to be made retreiving errant golf balls.
I dont really ever see a penny on the street ... too many people around to pick it up already I guess ...
Did any of y'all ever set up a lemonade stand? I saw one recently, run by two 12-year old girls (I would guess).
Hi realjohnboy.
Now that you mention it - I think I read something about lemonaid stands raising money for cancer research this summer and it was started by a couple of pre-teen girls. Let me see if I can find it....
i saw a penny on the street this morning... i picked it up, gosh-dangit
My mother always used to pick up lost pennies. She called them "lucky pennies," and always placed them under the floormat of her car (driver's side) for luck. My son now calls them "lucky pennies," too. He saves them.
A confession: we four were the worst of the bad boys, we played cards before class and hissed at the freshmen who looked in on us, we hung out with persons not of the highest moral quality after school and --- oh, the shame of it all -- we threw pennies at the girls as they passed by in the halls.
Yes. We were evil.
We thought all of this was hilarious fun, even chortling at the confused announcement by the principal that the custodians had reported an odd thing, some two dollars and forty cents in pennies had been strewn about the hallways, the cash would be donated to a local charity, but he was curious as the reason so many pennies could be found laying about.
We kept mum and dealt the cards.
Then it all changed, towards the end of sophomore year, two of my card partners were expelled (smoking on school grounds and talking back to a teacher) and a third announced that his father had decided that Catholic school hadn't been the uplifting experience he had hoped for his son.
I was alone, the last of the big bad back bay bad boys*, I left the deck of cards in Sister Marie Teresa's desk drawer and never tossed a penny again, but I did stay a misfit, I'm proud to say. Once, no, twice, I got slapped for, well, actually nevermind, but it was worst than tossing loose change in the hallways.
Joe
*not our real name. Another story.
I look at your avatar Joe...and I say..."NAH!
That's the best part of having a sweet face like mine, you can get away with murder........
got an odd lookin' penny in my change today.
its a 1945s (copper) cent
niiiiiiiiice...
Setanta wrote:Despite all the horrors attendant upon growing up these days, Jim, i think they also miss out from a lack of long periods of unsupervised activity. Basically, we were turned loose, or even driven from the house if our presence were annoying, and we spent a great deal of our time alone or in the company of other children, no adults.
Set - I simply can't imagine you as an annoying child!
Top hunting grounds for spare change are right outside the drive up window at the fast food chains. With limited use of the left arm, I usually just get outside the car to get my change, so I make a quick count, multiply by pi, and tell the person on the other side of the glass how much has accumulated. Hard to pick up, you know, when it's been glued to the pavement by a squashed packet of ketsup.
It used to be, roger, that the fast-food places would close at 11 pm. I would go down there and collect the pennies from on the ground outside each of the about six of them strung out along route 29. And then I would take my pennies to the 7-11 and buy a beer.
But now the drive-in windows are open all night.
I long for the good old days.
I keep those wheatback pennies and any other coin that I come across that is old.
As far as picking up pennies - I don't, but I have my kids pick them. They need to earn their keep some how.
I keep those wheatback pennies and any other coin that I come across that is old.
As far as picking up pennies - I don't, but I have my kids pick them. They need to earn their keep some how.
Speaking of lemonade stands
it is not even safe to have your little girls in front of your house selling lemonade any more. "Two girls selling lemonade in their Lowell neighborhood fled their stand in fear after a shirtless man with missing teeth pulled up in a minivan and started masturbating."
http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=94550
