Bobbie Calhoun

The sun was shining, the tulips that my father planted out front just starting to raise their heads above the dirt. The barbeque needed cleaning after a long winter anchored in the snowy backyard. It was spring and where was my father? Upstairs in his bedroom, sorting out pennies.

I didn’t know the word “numismatic” until my father was quite old. But I did know that our monthly trips to the bank downtown in the 1960s and ’70s were very important to Dad. Dover Trust National Bank was a tall, imposing white marble building with Corinthian columns like the one in the Harry Potter movies. He would bring me with him to exchange a shoebox full of sorted pennies to get new ones. I remember the bank counter was so high I had no hope of seeing over it. The teller’s voice, respectful and quiet, wafted over my head, matching the whispered tones all around us. My father gave her the rolls he had and received a new batch in return.

When we got home, he’d dump out the pennies onto his desk, pull out a magnifying glass, and look for – what? A double-die, which we’d all hear about at dinner. I remember helping him re-roll the coins and our long conversations about what he’d found. He’d pause to point to the tiny “D” next to the year on one. That meant it was minted in Denver, all the way out in Colorado, he’d say, as I listened with awe. The “S” meant San Francisco.

The lawn needed mowing, the windows needed cleaning, and he would get to those tasks, my three brothers called upon to help him. But this was a little place just the two of us visited, together. When my father passed away, my brother found several boxes of pennies in my father’s office closet. Had he examined those yet, or did they hold undiscovered treasure? One rarely even sees a penny in circulation these days. But, once upon a time, my father and I went traveling, our heads bent down over little mounds of copper coins, dreaming of places we would never see.