Every time it rains/It rains pennies from heaven
Don’t you know each cloud contains/Pennies from heaven?
The U.S. Treasury Department announced that the last, the very last penny, was minted in Philadelphia last Monday. There will be no more fresh pennies. Ever. A penny costs 3 cents to produce, making it a losing bargain for the Treasury. According to CNN, “Its current form arrived in 1909 on the centennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, when it became the first American coin to feature a president. But it has declined in both use and popularity ever since. The Treasury Department now estimates that there are approximately 300 billion pennies in circulation. That comes to a bit less than $9 for every person in the United States. But most of those coins are “severely underutilized.”
I can’t argue the logic of phasing out the penny. From a macroeconomic level, it’s a sound decision. In various random spots around my home are jars filled with marbles, dry pens, paper clips, rubber bands, and pennies that have been stored in those jars for years. So I get their “underutilization.” But from a personal perspective, it’s very sad, this slow extinction event, and indicative of the passage of time and the things that slowly fade away.
You’ll find your fortune’s fallin’/All over the town
Be sure that your umbrella/Is upside down
For we children of the baby boomer generation, pennies were our primary currency. We saved them in piggy banks and smelly Dutch Masters cigar boxes. We could buy penny candy that cost one cent. Five pennies got us a pack of baseball cards, which included a piece of stale pink bubble gum inside. We felt flush having a pocket full of pennies. It dragged our pants down, but the extra-tight belt was worth it.
Change has a way of thoroughly erasing the past. Things that were precious to us become curios or punchlines. Rotary phones. Betamax. VHS tapes. Record players. Answering machines. Typewriters. Card catalogs. None of these things are, in and of themselves, culturally iconic. They are not lynch pins holding our way of life together. But they do represent things we never imagined would evaporate.
The end of the penny is a poignant reminder to everyone: all things must pass. We can protest and shake our heads, vehemently refusing to accept this fundamental truth. But the way of the world will not respectfully pull over and wait for our sadness and anxiety about change to resolve.
So when you hear it thunder/Don’t run under a tree
There’ll be pennies from heaven/For you and me
I understand that we’ll all have to round up or down whenever we pay a bill with cash (which is another endangered practice)—no big deal. Nickels will replace pennies in the cash drawer.. And when our great-grandchildren hear this old tune, Pennies From Heaven, will they ask, “What’s a penny?” Of course they will.
I hate losing one of the few objects of good luck from my childhood. What will take the place of lucky pennies?
Don’t we need luck more than ever right now?
Before Shabbat 