Maybe this memory applies only to Thom and myself, but maybe the girls also engaged in this exciting activity. I can remember being with friends of mine when we placed pennies on train tracks and left them for a day or so. Then when we came back they were smashed flat. The photo on the left is not an actual picture of mine, but I can remember the pennies being much flatter, maybe more like the second photo (also not mine).
Along with the excitement of seeing something flattened by thousands of pounds of steel was the myth was that placing a penny on the track could de-rail the train. Never happened - not in Flat Rock anyway.An interesting thing I learned is pennies made before 1982 actually have a metallurgical value of more than 1 cent (about 2.3 cents). Even the current nickel of today, has a metallurgical value of 6.3 cents. Who says our money is not worth anything!? It is also ironic that in 2007, pennies cost 1.7 cents each to ship, and nickels cost 9.5 cents each. Pennies made before 1982, i.e. the ones we flattened with locomotive engines, were 95% copper and 5% zinc; pennies made today are 97.5% zinc and 2.5% copper with the copper being plated over a zinc core.
OK, so Marie or Linda fess up! Did you ever do the penny on the train track thing? Or was it just a guy thing?
2 comments:
Yep...sure did. Up by Huroc Park. Then I remember getting so scared that the train would derail and take out the water tower or something. Somehow they would discover that I had put the penny on the track! Ahh...my paranoid youth. That's the only time I remember doing it, but I am sure I tried it more than once.
Don't remember ever doing that--probably too scared. Don't remember ever even being that close to the tracks to lay a penny on them. Remember the summer activity of de-legging Daddy long legs and burning holes in leaves with a magnifying glass. Also smacking a roll of caps with a rock, one dot at a time.Thom and Barry liked to catch garter snakes and try to scare me with them --which they succeeded in doing until I held one and wasn't scared at all I was amazed they weren't slimy at all. I remember going out to the hugh oak tree in the field behind Eliase's house before there was a sub there. It seemed like a huge hike to reach that tree and that was where we found snakes.
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