...and saw the throat of a driveway — yes, that's what the transition between a driveway and a street is called — with a spilled mess of pennies. Which no one had claimed, and which I picked up (along with a spent battery I've now put in my bag of batteries to be properly disposed of).
FIFTY-THREE PENNIES. Fifty-three, one of them from 1956 (left by a messy time-traveler?), now collected and on my bedroom desk. That's on top of the 21¢ in pennies, plus a dime and a nickel I'd gotten earlier in my travels (quick, how many coins is that? Do the algebra!**).
There's a good chance I'm above 700 pennies now. I'll find out for sure eventually. Meanwhile, these pennies have a good home.
* I'm reading Henry and Beezus, Beverly Cleary's second Henry Huggins novel, and in it he's trying to earn enough money for a bike. Maybe I'll update in a later post whether he gets one. I'm helpful.
** No, the math is simpler than that. Six pennies, a nickel and a dime were in my batch of earlier change. But you could have used algebra...