With the Famine Here, I'm Feeling CENTimental About Those Weeks I Feasted

My plans for making Pennyillionaire seem to have gone awry! One penny per week is not gonna get me there! You know what a Pollyanna I am, though. I am thrilled to have found a penny on TUESDAY, February 5th, at The Gas Station Chicken Store.

I saw him dancing there by the record machine. WAIT! No I didn't! That was Joan Jett, ogling that guy about 17. What I meant to say was that I saw my penny laying there by the lottery machine. Only it's not so much a machine as a stand where you can mark your tickets if you pick your own draw numbers for games like PowerBall and MegaMillions and Lotto. I don't play them. But I saw my rightful penny as I walked in. Down the brown-striped carpet.

Old Abe was face-down, a 1975 relic, perhaps dropped by someone who was confusedly scratching a ticket over at the draw game podium.

Maybe I SHOULD play the draw games. Wednesday night, someone from a neighboring town, even farther in the boondocks than Backroads, won the $1.3 million Lotto jackpot! I'm sure they are deserving of that money, and will put it to good use. Nobody would drive out there just to buy a Lotto ticket. It's not like some richie rich person was cruising down the interstate and stopped off for a cappuccino and landed backasswards, as Hick would say, in a pile of money. Enough money to burn a wet mule, also courtesy of Hick.

I never had much luck on draw games, though. So I'll stick with my penny-picking and scratchers.
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Found another one! FRIDAY, February 8th, I went to the license office to renew my driver's license. It's been six years, you know. The last time I renewed my license, I had two boys in high school, and my loving mother, ridiculing my photo! I was thinking about it all day on Thursday, reminiscing about how Mom and I laughed until we were breathless and in tears. I looked back in my blog and found three posts about it. [I linked them on my SuperSecret Blog, but I'll put them here in a future tale.]

That really put me in a good mood. I was still smiling about it as I drove to town with my renewal card. I was a regular Mona Lisa behind T-Hoe's wheel. I parked in my favorite License Office space, on the end. No other vehicles in my row. They didn't seem busy at all. I slid down out of T-Hoe, avoiding his dirty, dirty running board after the creek-flooding rains we've had this week. Once inside, I did my business (of course there's another story) and was out within ten minutes!

Back outside, I saw that a red truck (not Hick) had parked right next to me. I could still get T-Hoe's door open all the way, though. In fact, I left it open after stowing my purse and new paper license inside, while I opened up the back door to get my jacket. 24 degrees! But I hadn't wanted my jacket on in my new picture!

I turned back to climb into T-Hoe, and saw

What was obviously a Penny From Heaven, meant just for me! I hadn't seen any penny there when watching my feet slide out of the driver's seat to go inside. Must have come from that red truck somehow. It couldn't have been positioned in a better place for me to find it! What are the odds that I'm going to the License Office for the first time in six years, and just happen to arrive in 24 degree weather, and just happen to be needing gas in T-Hoe, and want to be warm when pumping it at my next stop? Avoid my gaze and cut eyes to each other and twirl that crazy finger near your temple! Nobody is going to convince me that this was a pure coincidence!

My Abe Lincoln was face down, with something colorful on his back. He was a 1975, just like my earlier penny this week. I don't know how that happened. In fact, I thought I was looking at the other one. Like I got them mixed up. But no. The other Abe was right on top of the pile in my new Future Pennyillionaire goblet. I took their picture together:

To prove it happened. I don't know the significance of that year. It was my senior year in high school. Nothing else particularly stands out.
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BUT WAIT! Squeaking in SATURDAY, February 9th, under the going-to-press deadline was a pair of DIMES! A scant 105 minutes before automatic publishing. It just doesn't pay to pre-post about pennies, I guess. Well. It PAYS. A little.

Over by the $5 DVD rack, hiding in the scuffed-up floor of indeterminate composition, was a face-up 1978. That's the year I forsook the local junior college and headed away to a state university.

Nobody was working at that register, so I set down my Polar Pop (The Gas Station Chicken Store's soda fountain ran dry of Diet Coke on Friday) to get my pictures. When I turned back to see how many people were in line staring at me, I saw

ANOTHER dime awaiting harvest! Some customer jittery from excess energy drinks must have dropped it. I guess those fellow customers think I'm really poor until I whip out my money for scratchers.

This FDR was face -down, a 1990. I can't think of anything interesting that year. I was adjusting to life with Hick, my new husband. Not that I ever had an old husband, of course. At this time in 1990, we'd been married about 10 weeks. Come to think of it, I'm STILL adjusting to life with Hick.

So much for my appropriate title. This really wasn't bait-and-switch. When I wrote it, thinking it was ready and could loll there in limbo awaiting automatic publishing... I had no idea I was going to find another penny and two dimes.

If I knew when I was going to find my special coins, I'd be a Pennyillionaire already!
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2019 Running Total
Penny   # 12, 13.
Dime   #  2, 3.
Nickel  still at 2.
Quarter  still at 1.

2018 TOTALS
Penny  131
Dime  17
Nickel  6
Quarter  1

2017 TOTALS (Started in March, 2017)
Penny  78
Dime   6
Nickel  0
Quarter  0
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