Penny Ante

Well, it's Abraham Lincoln's Birthday, and what better way to celebrate the day than to write about a major controversy now swirling around old Honest Abe: whether or not the penny, which has borne his likeness for oh, so many years, should be retired.

I can actually recall the last time when I bent down to retrieve a penny from the ground. It was April 1979, and I had just gone to Maury's Delicatessen in Webster Square, Worcester, to purchase cold cuts for the spread we were going to have after my grandmother's funeral.

I was crossing the street with an armload full of pepperoni, salami, bologna, and American cheese, when I spied a penny. I stooped to pick it up, but halted in mid-stoop, saying to myself, "What? Are you nuts?"

And that, my friends, was nearly 30 years ago, when the penny was worth a lot more. Maybe not enough to actually buy anything with, but still of greater value than it is now.

Much as I like the penny, it has, I'm afraid, outlived its usefulness.

And, as they reported on 60 Minutes the other night, it actually costs a lot more to produce than it's worth.

As I said, I rather like the penny. It has a distinctive color, honors a president I admire, and has tremendous sentimental value.

Now, I don't really remember the penny being worth all that much, but when I was a kid there was something called penny candy that actually cost a penny. (Penny candy now seems to cost a nickel or a dime.) If you had a couple of pennies, you could go to Carerra's, gaze into the glass cases that contained the penny candy, and make your agonizing decision: licorice whip, bull's eye, button candy, wax lips, wax teeth, Squirrel Nut, Mary Jane, Mint Julep (2 for a penny!), Banana Split (ditto - but they had a really revolting taste), candy cigarettes, candy lipstick. Wax lips and wax teeth may actually have cost 2 cents, but they were absolutely worth every penny.

Once you made the decision, Mr. or Mrs. Carerra, or their son Butchy, put the candy in a little brown paper bag for you.

One memorable day, my friend Bernadette was given a quarter, and we wiled away the afternoon slipping in and out of Carerra's, buying a few pieces of candy at a time, then going over to hang out at the edges of The Oval, a grassed in area - not quite a park - in the middle of the street in front of Carerra's, where the big boys hung out and played catch.

Carerra's, by the way, was in the basement of a three-decker, a frequent location for commerce in our neighborhood. I don't remember whether Carerra's was a market or a spa, spa being the term most commonly used for the convenience stores that dotted the neighborhoods in Worcester. (The same impulse that went into naming these stores "spas" was similarly directed toward calling the porches on three-deckers "piazzas".)

What else could you do with a penny?

You could go to the Main Crest Pharmacy and try your hand at getting the lucky gumball from the gumball machine. The lucky gumball was yellow with red stripes, and if it came out on your penny, you could trade it in for a candy bar (value: 5 cents). It was rumored that the lucky gumballs were glued to the sides of the gumball machine, since no one ever seemed to win.

Or, if your parents bought you cool penny loafers rather than clunky saddle shoes, you could put a penny in the penny slot. (The really cool kids used nickels.)

(Boy, do I feel like Laura Ingalls Wilder writing about the good old days.)

But I digress.

The anti-penny argument, as put forward by Retire The Penny, is that the penny "no longer facilitates commerce."

Inflation has eaten away at the value of the penny to such a degree that it no longer facilitates commerce. The fact that the penny is still in circulation does not mean that it is useful. If the half penny were minted then it too would be in circulation, even though it would be nothing but a nuisance. The half penny was eliminated in 1858, when it was worth over ten times what the penny is worth today. Assuming that the timing was correct before, this means that we should have eliminated the penny fifty years ago.

I remember seeing an occasional half penny or two-cent piece when I was a kid, but they were so long out of circulation, they must have been "collectors items" that somebody showed. But the argument that the penny should have been eliminated fifty years ago doesn't quite square with the existence of penny candy and gumball machines at that point in time. Believe me, no one would have spent a nickel on one piece of penny candy when they could buy an entire candy bar with it.

Retire The Penny argues that producing the penny is a waste of money. If their numbers are correct - that the US Treasury mints 7 billion pennies each year, to the tune of $100 million - each penny costs $.70 to produce. (Thus, the value of the penny seems like it should be $.70, no? I just can't wrap my head around this one, but it sure sounds ridiculous.)

They also point out that the main lobbying force for keeping the penny is the zinc producers, who'd lose out big time if the penny got disappeared on us.

Retire's other argument is that making change that involves pennies is a big waste of time:

The National Association of Convenience Stores and Walgreen's drug store chain estimated that handling pennies adds 2 to 2.5 seconds to each cash transaction (remember that we are including the occasional customer who spends 30 seconds looking for the penny in his pocket).

They then go through some contortions to demonstrate that the cost of using pennies in terms of lost productivity is $10B per year. (Interesting, but if you really think about it, it's like one of those "270 women pregnant for 1 day each can't make a baby" situation.) Sure, I may be wasting 24 hours a year fumbling for pennies, but that time is parsed out so granularly that I'd never be able to string it together to do something really meaningful.

Now, counting, sorting, cashing in pennies by stores may well be a different story, in terms of productivity.

I didn't bother to look for the Zinc Association of America, but I do want to give equal time to Penny Lovers of America, which is an odd little feel-good organization that in no way seems like the lobbying wing of Zinc, Inc.

Founder Richard Barber:

...promote[s] the penny as the symbol of "self-help and self-reliance", and as the central vehicle in conveying lessons of Character, Scholarship and Patriotism to young people.

His "personal relationship and affinity for the 'penny'" began when he was a little kid and swallowed five pennies. Forty-two years after this seminal event, Barber:

...was awakened around 2:00 a.m. one morning from a deep sleep by the hand of God with the inspiration to write the words "A PENNY SPEAKS." These words expressed by a "penny" itself, convey the burning desire to unite with other non-productive, abused and seemingly worthless pennies to make positive contributions to society and improve the conditions and the quality of life for our people through united "PENNY POWER."

Well, you have your burning bush, and then you have your talking penny. God sure works in some mysterious ways.

But God spoke to Richard Barber in 1984, and the pennies gone down hill since in terms of value, and uphill in terms of nuisance.

I can be as sentimental a fool as the next guy, and I sure will miss those great expressions:

• A penny saved is a penny earned.
• Penny wise, pound foolish.
• A penny for your thoughts.
• If I had a penny for every time (which, I believe, has already inflated to "if I had a nickel")

But penny candy is already devoid of all meaning, as is penny arcade (although I think that one of the ancient fortune telling or weight machines at the Salem Willows still costs a penny). Penny ante will hold its meaning (sort of). Are kids with red hair still nicknamed "Penny"?

Enough is enough! The penny must die! And it just might work out. Surely, someone can re-master Bing Crosby crooning, "Every time it rains, it rains, quarters from heaven."