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Penny Pincher- A Roland McCray Story
There are more uses for a bit of loose change than can be imagined.
“Hey, Roland,” Johnny called out as he skidded his bike to stop, throwing up gravel in front of my house where I was sitting on the concrete steps of my front porch. “You gotta see this!”
He ran across the dried brown grass yard then pulled something from his pocket and handed it to me. It was a thin piece of whitish metal, about three inches long. I did not know why he was so excited about it. I looked it over then at Johnny. “What is it?”
“It’s a quarter. Can you believe it? Butch sold it to me to me for thirty-five cents.”
“A quarter?” I said and looked at it from both sides. “Why would you think this is a quarter? It’s just metal.”
“Look at the edge of it,” he said and pointed to one edge of it. “Those are ridges like quarters have. It’s been flattened out.” I looked closely at the part he indicated. There were tiny, hard to see lines along one edge. “Yes, I guess those could be ridges… but how did it get it this flat and stretched so long?” I knew that was not something Butch could have done with a hammer, or even in the bench press the man down the street who fixes cars has in his workshop.
“He said a train ran over it,” Johnny replied in a matter-of-fact voice. “It’s really neat…
