5. The Value of a Penny
Today is 35 days from the first anniversary of Dad’s passing. I’ve committed to writing 40 stories about him as that day approaches. Forty Steady Stories.
My Dad was my hero for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid, I wanted to be just like him. I wanted to dress, laugh, play basketball, do math in my head, build things, and have fun just like he did. I’m not saying that we didn’t have some tough seasons in our relationship, because we did. I’ll write about some of those later. But no matter what, deep down, he was still my hero, and I knew —beyond any doubt — that he loved me.
Saturdays were awesome as a kid with my dad. This was before team and travel sports took over our weekends. I’d jump in the car with Dad, and we’d go to the Southern Railway train yard just off North Tryon St. I’d put on my engineer’s cap as we hopped out of the car. Dad seemed to know all the men that worked there, but especially the engineers. We’d spend the better part of the morning hopping on the trains and the engineers would let me pull levers and drive the trains. I’d watch as they coupled and uncoupled boxcars and flatbeds and tankers.
The best part of those Saturday mornings was when I got to put a penny on the train tracks. The first time I did it, I had no idea what would happen. Dad just told me to put it right in the center of the track. Then he waved to the engineer and the train started rolling toward the penny. It rolled over it, and then went back to where it started. To my amazement, the penny was flattened out and bent. I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. Sometimes Dad even let me put a nickel or a dime on the tracks, and I think once or twice I talked him into letting us try a quarter. Then we’d ride the trains a little more and Dad would often take pictures of the trains while I rode back and forth.
After a while, we often went to Sears down the street and would browse the Craftsman tools and the toys. Then sometimes we’d go down to Dad’s office on Tuckaseegee and I’d roll around in the chairs in the hallways while he worked for a bit. On the way home, we always stopped off at the Krispy Kreme at Independence and Hawthorne Lane for a glazed donut and an ice-cold milk, but that’s another story for another day. After all that, we’d head home to Mom.
I learned a lot on those Saturday mornings. I learned that my dad wanted to be with me. He wanted to hang out and teach me about trains, things, and people. I learned that if you are nice to people, sometimes they’ll pause their day to pour joy into yours. If you get to know people, they’ll share life along the tracks with you. I learned that the value of a penny is more than one cent. Used in the right way, those pennies became memories markers of immeasurable worth. Why? Because they represented the gift of time.
When you’re a kid, you don’t think about life in terms of time. It’s not something kids are in the habit of measuring. But my dad understood it, and he gave me such a gift as a kid on countless Saturday mornings. In fact, he taught me that you can build a bridge that connects people with just a penny — if you’ll take time to do so.
