Tales From Exit 22 by Al Batt

I wasn’t talking aloud to myself, but I was doing color commentary in my mind.

Like everyone, I had things to consider. I once saw a opossum run headfirst into the pole of a shepherd’s hook and a woman walk headfirst into a farm combine parked across from a small-town cafe. Neither opossum nor woman suffered serious injuries, but such occurrences deserve reflection.

The elephant-headed Hindu god, Ganesh, must have been busy that day. He is considered the remover of obstacles, but he also places obstacles in the paths of those who need testing. The opossum and the woman must have been in that group.

I’d been doing some Christmas shopping. At this time of year, we each become someone who has found Aladdin’s Lamp. We wish for things. I enjoy the giving, but the getting can be exasperating if I let myself think about it too much. There is always a better gift or a better deal. Those are obstacles. Ganesh was at work.

After leaving the store, I picked up two pennies from the pavement and put them in my pocket.

Why bother picking up pennies? It’s part of my get rich slowly scheme. I’m cheap and I remember when I was a boy and a penny bought something. I could get a small piece of candy for a penny.

There are aphorisms about retrieving discarded pennies.

Find a penny, pick it up. All day long, you’ll have good luck.

Find a penny, pick it up. All day long, you’ll have one cent.

A friend told me that when I find a penny, it means that a departed loved one is thinking of me. That leaves me with a warm feeling, but I wish they’d give me a $20 thought. The penny may be a sign from a loved one who is among the living and didn’t want the coins cluttering up the lint in the pockets of his jeans.

My mother referred to pennies from heaven. That phrase meant unexpected good fortune or a windfall. The expression may have originated with a motion picture and song by that name popularized by Bing Crosby.

I’ve never worn penny loafers, but I know those who have and placed a penny in a little slot front and center on each shoe. They were put there for no apparent reason other than to make a cool fashion statement. I remember a college-aged fellow who found a utilitarian reason for those slots. He slipped dimes into them. Not everyone was a walking telephone in those days, so phone booths were used to make calls. A pay phone cost him a dime. If he kept his shoes loaded, he had money to place a couple of emergency phone calls. And college students make emergency calls.

Not long after my picking up my two cents’ worth, I visited someone who gave me some lefse rolled around butter and sugar. I like lefse. What’s not to like? It’s bread, dessert and a napkin all in one.

A person of robust German heritage, when offered the lefse, raised her eyebrows and said she’d rather have sauerkraut. I like sauerkraut. I’d like both.

I’ll bet Martin Luther liked sauerkraut. In 1517, Luther nailed a copy of his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church. He might have glued a round of lefse to the door, too, but I can’t confirm that. 

Why am I writing about lefse in the midst of a story about pennies? Thanks for asking. A fellow lefse eater gave me the latest gossip making the rounds in his particular set. Jesse James had never really died. I masked my incredulity. Jesse would have had an exceptional string of good luck to survive 170 years. James was presumed to have been shot while dusting or straightening a picture on the wall of his rented home in St. Joseph, Missouri, in 1882. His assassin was Bob Ford, a member of the James gang who’d cut a deal with the governor of Missouri to capture the infamous outlaw for the $10,000 reward. There was lingering speculation that James had faked his death and someone else was buried in his grave. Several men claimed to be Jesse James. In 1995, scientists decided to see if Jesse was buried in Jesse’s grave and exhumed his supposed remains from Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Kearney, Missouri. After conducting DNA testing, they concluded that it was almost certainly Jesse James.

That didn’t surprise me.

Good luck comes with finding a penny, not stealing one.

Al Batt’s column appears every Wednesday and Sunday.