It began as a collection... and now it’s an obsession

It all started one gloriously snow-filled day when the windows were blocked by snow for the millionth time (this happens more often than you might think when you live in the basement). While stuck inside Petey and I decided to think about more pleasant things, like the summer. We resolved to see the world, or at least some of the United States beyond the east coast. Still in our flannel shirts and jeans, we got out the atlas and started tracing routes, changing the highlighter color with every new brochure from some exotic (and some not so exotic) places to see. “Right in your own backyard” most attractions proclaimed. Well, since our backyard is only 9’ x 9’ I resolved that we HAD to get out and see these wonders of the natural and not so natural world for ourselves. Our trip was to be a quest for knowledge about our own country, seen while On the Road.; we would travel by car, and sleep beneath the stars. We would cook on the camp fire, and stop occasionally at a desolate coffee shop and talk with the locals. I thought we would have made Ol’ Jack proud.

So after nearly 5 months of planning, off we set for highways unknown. Our first major stop was planned for the coal mining town of Beckley, West Virginia. We weren’t really intending to stay to see the exhibition coal mine, but instead were there for the penny machine. When I called on the phone back in March to request a brochure, I offhandedly asked if they had a penny machine. Well, since they had one right in the lobby, the girl on the phone assured me, I thought we may as well stop, it was sort of on the way... After nearly 20 minutes cruising the Main Street strip at 9am in our powder blue Cutlass, we finally found our destination and nearly leapt out of the car. We raced in anxiously, postcards, pennies, and quarters in hand. But two steps in the door we realized our folly. They only had generic designs; just the I love yous, unicorns, and lucky pennies that can be found at any turnpike bathroom. We struck out on our first time at bat, and all I could think of was, “well, tomorrow we’ll be in Kentucky and I’m sure we’ll find some there...”

When we reached Kentucky our accommodations seemed less than accommodating-two days out and already the romantic ideal of sleeping under the stars was shattered. The only campground I could find in the state brochure turned out to be a gravel parking lot behind the gas station in downtown Corbin, KY, home of the Original Colonel’s Kentucky Fried restaurant. SO in the spirit of the journey, we traveled a little bit longer down the road to one of those beckoning brown signs. Sure enough, we had found a state park! It was absolutely beautiful, right on the water and only a 15 minute drive from dinner!

After our finger lickin’ good food we meandered around the attached museum: it consisted of lots of preserved advertisements and marketing ploys such a Colonel Sanders fans and coloring books. But they had also preserved what made this white-haired southerner into a marketing genius. In its original place in the restaurant was a fully furnished model of one of the Colonel’s motel rooms. Before the advent of the superhighway, the Colonel’s restaurant and motel was located on the main north-south route to Florida. Vacationing families in need of a clean place to have a meal and stay the night were enticed by the full scale model permanently on display near the women’s bathroom (so the woman of the family could discretely inspect the accommodations). Now we were getting a good feeling about this place. Col. Sanders seemed to be a kindred traveling spirit- we were sure there would be pennies. We were sorely disappointed. Wasn’t this a tourist mecca of epic proportions? How could the Colonel have let us down? We left with full stomachs but penniless pockets looking forward to tomorrow’s penny hunt.

I was beginning to doubt that anywhere besides the New Jersey Turnpike had squished pennies when we arrived in the first of several family-themed towns, Cave City, KY. With towering water slides, mini golf every half-mile and more Denny’s knockoffs than we could try in two day’s stay, I knew we were finally in luck. Stopping on a hunch at the (stuffed) Wildlife Museum on the highway into town, we struck copper! (or at least a copper press) We pumped the woman behind the counter for information about the town, especially anything pertaining to squished pennies. Now on a penny high, we explored the town for every toursity cave (hole in the ground) and rock shop (souvenir shops specializing in selling you the stuff that you throw out of your garden a home).

While outside Big Mike’s Rock Shop, the largest and closest to the national park, we began talking to a man about our project for a squished penny museum. He was so impressed he called his wife over to have her donate their penny right out of her purse! Kentucky was good to us, and our focus had seemed to change permanently.

“Squished Pennies? Not in OUR Town!” : Tennesee to Oklahoma

When we last left our copper crusaders they had just struck it rich in Cave City with several pennies, friendly locals, and mini golf galore...but wait a minute–how can they keep this pace up? Is that their arch enemy hubris lurking around the corner? Can they survive this perilous adventure..tune in next time.. I mean this time for the continuing adventures of the Squishers!!! Well, at least that was how we were feeling after the haul of pennies in Cave City, Kentucky. We thought we were invincible, and having heard the story of Icarus too many times, I knew that our confidence was a bad omen.

Memphis was the next stop on our whirlwind tour, but I guess I am getting ahead of myself. Memphis, the city that stops twice daily to watch a line of Huey, Duey, and Luey’s third cousins waddle from the hotel pool to the rooftop and back again, the home city of the Pink Palace museum (just a great name) is truly the only place on Earth that could have produced America’s only royalty, Elvis. His home, one of America’s first gated communities, is visited every year by millions of devoted fans from all over the world, just dying to sink knee-deep into the plush carpet and eat fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches with the likes of someone whose mother’s cousin’s next-door-neighbor once had a ticket to see Elvis.

When we arrived I realized that Graceland was all that I had anticipated and more. Filled with hallways stacked from floor to ceiling with memorabilia, tributes, plaques, and gold records, the house was the epitome of America; poor country boy with humble beginnings makes it big, and buys glamorous house named after mom. As we floated through the tour, Priscilla’s voice gently and reverently tells of His life, here and elsewhere, conspicuously leaving out all the details the National Inquirer keeps quoting about space abduction and sightings in everyone’s local 7-11. But I was distracted throughout the tour; all I could think about was the holy grail, our reward for our devotion–the officially sanctioned, licensed, trademarked 15,000 square foot Gift Shop. I knew a good family man like Elvis would love pennies, he just had to. But in every language the answer was the same, no souvenir Elvis pennies. For that, we would have to go across the conspicuous wooden fence separating the Presley compound’s licensed shops from the rif-raf shops in the strip mall next door. It was a long shot, but we were willing to risk it. And oh, did our persistence pay off. Not only was there a machine, but in true Elvis style, there were 8 different designs, all glitzy and glamorized at a $1.00 each!! We carefully searched our pennies to find the coveted wheat penny with His birth date on it that we had gotten in change at the KFC museum, and gingerly placed the penny in the carrier, so as to position the date right next to His face. This was our most proud acquisition thus far.

Hot Springs, Arkansas was next on our agenda–not exactly on everyone’s ‘A’ list for sites to visit, but I thought it could be fun. Having read about the naturally hot spring water and massages given in a restored 1920’s spa atmosphere, we decided that this was a well deserved respite from penny hunting. Located just a couple of miles from the nearby campground–which, conspicuously, did not have any showers–was the town of Hot Springs, Home of President Bill Clinton, as they were so proud to exclaim on everything from fire hydrants to bus benches.

With our trusty map complete with the new snazzy town logo in-hand, we set out to explore for ourselves. The town was indeed in need of some paint, and a few repairs here and there; generally it felt a bit run down, and not at all like most National Parks we visited. Main street, as we soon discovered, looked a little like the retirees who seem to be the main clientele: a bit saggy, but well used and pleasant. We spent nearly an hour wandering around, reading the ubiquitous brown Park Service signs proclaiming all the “firsts” and the “significants” which made this sleepy little town worth our tax dollars, when we realized that this was getting us nowhere. We were dirty and grouchy, and it was going to rain, what a day. So I asked the clerk at the official gift shop where we might be able to find pennies so we could just get on our way. When she haughtily replied “Not in our town”, all I could think was “Where are my ruby slippers, Toto? I want to go home.” But instead we decided to do what we had come there for (and so had everyone else)...take a bath, at least that might make us feel better.

I sauntered up to the counter and paid for two baths, one for each of us, “the economy version please, we are in a rush to experience America and can’t be held up.” Within a few moments we were whisked away up separate stairways given a locker, a sheet, and told to wait. Then a stout but strong woman came in and helped me with my hospital corners. From there I was washed, patted, watered, steamed, soaked, and basted until I was sure the only thing left was to dress me with decorative vegetables for Thanksgiving dinner. The final process involved relaxing while hot towels were put over aching muscles. I was wrapped so tightly in my roman bed sheet turned toga that I thought now I know how an egg roll feels. After a transitional cool down we each descended to greet one another with wet hair and permagrins. Baked and marinated, we were both ready to finally see the sights.

Upon re-entry onto the street we discovered that for some unknown reason all the townspeople had conspired to paint and clean up the city while we were in the bath. We didn’t know that penny aficionados were treated with such reverence. Suddenly everything in the town was gleaming and bright, and we could not believe how goofy we felt. What was in that water, anyhow? Our first stop was at the wax museum. We did not see the exhibits of melting personalities, but we did however see the penny machine right in the front window. Although it was out of order, the ticket sales clerk gave us a pre-squished penny from the register. We had no idea how much clout the Museum had! She also gave us some hot tips on other machines in the city. We proceeded next to the aquarium. The machine was located inside the darkened room of fish tanks, but the owner let us in to use it anyway since we promised not to look at the fish. From there it seemed that every other store had a machine with different designs. We were we on another penny high. We were sure we had found the penny Mecca, already laying plans for an international penny conference in what we were sure was the per-capita-penny-capital of the world.

Next was a brief stop in a sleepy town in the Ozark mountains called Eureka Springs, home of the passion play performed every night to sell-out crowds of people 365 days a year. It was then we realized we had hit the waistland of the nation, the Bible Belt. Although it seemed a bit straight-laced to have pennies, there was also a dinosaur park and a frog museum, so we reasoned there must be a lunatic fringe somewhere. It was not long before our jaunt down main street led to some good ol’ fashioned American commercial exploitation. Nestled among the 3/4 scale Faux-Alpine shops and accommodations with names like the Joy Motel and the Savior (pronounced Save-Your) Motor Court we found three penny machines with 9 different designs, several of which depicted the 10 story 60’s stylized cast concrete Jesus statute that is the trademark of this region, and can be seen for miles. Not exactly something to be found in an art history textbook, but certainly an icon nonetheless.

We spent most of the next day in the car. Somewhere along that seemingly endless stretch of road called I-40 we paused at the Cherokee Trading Post, the West’s version of a NJ turnpike travel plaza. A combination bathroom, truck stop, and souvenir shop this was certainly more interesting than anything on I-95. Even if we hadn’t had to, we felt compelled to stop just to see what all the hype was about. We had seen signs for this place every few miles since Oklahoma City. Funny how many signs there were, since this was the only sign of civilization for miles on the only road for as far as the eye could see. Anyway, just as in New Jersey there was a penny machine right next to the bathroom. I found it so comforting to know that there really are some things that all Americans share besides the McDonald’s ads and Tom Brokaw.

Soon after, we stopped for the evening to camp. It was a little too close to the penitentiary for my tastes (with signs proclaiming not to pick up hitchhikers, they may be escaped convicts), but it was beautiful. It was a state park called Red Rock Canyon, a slightly enlarged ditch with steep sides made of very soft red clay that was pockmarked from all the visitors who used it to practice rock climbing. Being easterners unaccustomed to the flatness of the Great Plains, we had no idea that this wound dug into the sun-leathered land above would soon prove our only protection from the wildness overhead.

When we checked-in with the park ranger, he asked us where we had come from. After the usual tirade about the waste of tax dollars in our hometown of DC and the surprise of how far we had already traveled, he casually mentioned that we would be “having some weather this evening”. Since where we come from weather is often benign, and by no means threatening, we were lulled into a false sense of security. While putting up the tent we noticed how unbelievably still the air was, and tragically we interpreted that to mean that there was no need to stake the tent. Within 15 minutes we realized our mistake as I was convinced that a train was barreling down the canyon, headed directly for us. After an hour of constant wind forcing us to cling to the support poles of the flimsy piece of fabric we called home, we were contemplating much greater issues than how many pennies had we netted so far. But as the weather started getting rough, and our tiny tent was tossed..if not for the spirit of the terrified two of us (not to mention the lucky fact that we were in a canyon, and not on top of the flat earth) all would have been lost, but luckily the pennies survived unscathed. This was to be the first of two near-misses with that terror of trailer parks nationwide: tornadoes.

Go West Young Man, And Squish! : Texas to Nevada

When last we met, the super squishers had just left Oklahoma and discovered that western public bathrooms (code name souvenir shops) that sell t-shirts with rude phrases and ball caps with fake pony tails also have penny machines. So if you have some pennies to unload, go west young man, and squish!

From Oklahoma the squishers traveled to another awe-inspiring site: Cadillac Ranch. This is in the northern squared off part of Texas, where everyone we met was anything but square. Especially the guy who had so much trouble parking all his Caddies. I know from experience that it can be tough to fit that 22 foot motor machine into a 25 foot parallel parking space, but this guy needs some real help. See, each car is parked face-first into the north Texas desert, making a tidy little line of Detroit's finest, fanny in the air like a farm of steel ostriches. But there is method to this madness, this fence of taillights is aligned in chronological order showing how the fins evolved. It's automotive Darwinism. I so wanted to commemorate Cadillac Ranch on a squished penny that I schemed about making my own, until I realized that the only means of electrification was the nearby Amarillo trucker icon, the Big Texan Steak House, complete with oversized (or undersized if you talk to a Texan) concrete cow replica out front, perfect for those "gotta send home photos". Unfortunately, I couldn't find an extension cord long enough to get the machine to the ranch.

The Big Texan Steak House is legendary. This is the place that for 400 miles across the flatness they advertise "72oz steak free!" with the asterisk that leads to the itsy-bitsy type "only if you finish it and the baked potato and salad in a hour while on stage with the world watching you gorge yourself like a Roman citizen without the vomitorium!" Complete with spotlights and all, this place was all you could imagine, and fun for a vegetarian too. My veggie plate was nicely grilled, but alas not free. No one cared how much broccoli I could snarf, even if I would agree to be on a stage with a bib declaring my eating prowess. After a lengthy look at the Wall of Fame of those who had triumphed over the steak (the fastest in something like 12 minutes. You can imagine the amount of TUMS he needed that night) we checked for, what else my copper-loving friends: pennies. But alas, none to be found in one of the greatest tourist generated places I had ever encountered. I was so disappointed that I even suggested to the clerk that they get one, but this was a mistake followed by a tirade about how un-American defacing currency was. Sheesh, I just asked.

From Texas the squish mobile rolled on along past the agro-farms with hundreds of cows standing in knee deep mud and the wind farms harvesting the breeze in this flat-as-a-squished-penny landscape into the real West of Hollywood cowboy movies and roadrunner cartoons. We found ourselves in some of the most bewitching land of our trip, the Painted Desert, where they have three clocks on the wall of the visitor center. One clock showed the time in AZ, the second the time on the neighboring Native American reservation, and the third the time in CA- which didn't stop us from asking the dutiful ranger standing directly beneath this display, "Excuse me, could you tell me what time it is?" Entranced though we were by the geologic time in the layered land and the redness of the sky (or confused by the ranger's answer), we were even more moved by the natural beauty of the two machines just outside the park. In true entrepreneurial fashion, when we asked at one shop if the other shop just across the street had a machine, they answered absolutely not. Good thing we had the time to check for ourselves.

From the reddest place on earth we ventured on to gander at the largest hole in the world, secretly excited to commemorate this natural wonder on a 1 1/2 inch disc. But much to our surprise, we came up dry. Not even in the gateway town of Williams (collectors note: self-proclaimed gateway towns are usually meccas for pennies because of their proximity to the attraction, and their tourist focus; but not this town.) We got more strange looks here than if we would have asked who dug the canyon in the first place. One woman we talked with haughtily stuck her nose high in the air and snorted "no one would put Grand Canyon on a penny!!" As if being immortalized on mutilated money weren't the desire of every self-respecting tourist attraction. But we knew that patience was the key, and it didn't take long. The now extinct Hoover Dam souvenir shack (see Squissue #1- Tragedy at Hoover Dam article) served us well in the convex change department.

This leg of our whirlwind journey ended where everyone in America goes who want to make quick money, Las Vegas. We weren't really interested in the silver or paper kind though. Just the flats, ma'am. With as much money floating around that place, we knew there must be someone taking advantage of the spirit and not only spending but squishing pennies. We arrived on the strip perfectly, just before dark. Las Vegas is much better in the dark, not just because the neon and pyrotechnics light your way better than any old exploding star, but because this multicolored light hides all the less that savory complexions of the players. Their pallor may be induced by the imfamously cheap but non-nutritional all-you-can-eat buffets. I know that our 10 or so dollars that bought entrance to the mile long display of chocolate pudding and tuna casserole probably shortened our life expectancy by at least a few minutes. So we got ourselves a room "Highly Recommended by the Owner" as proclaimed on their pink marquee. To top it off, the somewhat crusty desk clerk told us that Elvis slept here, and they painted his picture on a mural in the room to prove it. We spent the rest of the night being disabused of all our glamorous notions of Vegas. No longer is it the playground of the rich and famous. It's just the retirement home for jogging suits and old change. And the worst news of all was that the only squishing machines we found were way in the back of one casino- so hard to find even the employees didn't think it was still there. Guess the stakes on penny machines are just too low for Vegas; or maybe it's the odds on these machines, since the player wins every time. (Editorial note: we have since heard from some LV natives that there were many machines months before we arrived, and have heard from visitors since that there are more now than when we visited. Talk about bad timing, huh? Must have chosen the wrong clock back at the Painted Desert) Viva Las Vegas!

As a footnote, we tried to continue our gambling binge by stopping in Reno, (believe it or not it was more for the food.) Despite our dismal turnout in Vegas we thought we would check for pennies anyway; a gambler's desperation is never matched. We did find one machine- it only squished quarters. That kind of inflation only happens in Nevada. We tried to get change at the nearby gift shop, but we got turned away with that polite shrug that says "we can only open the register if you buy something, so stop being so cheap and just buy some gum". But I had a great idea, I asked the next person who walked by clutching several plastic barrels (alternatively used as ashtrays by the smell of them) of quarters from the slot machines, so heaping that they almost spilled as she rounded the corner. I politely approached and asked if she could give us some change for two dollars? to which she thought she honestly replied: I am sorry, I don't have any change, and walked away. Maybe she couldn't bear that thought that I was going to retire her winnings in the roller never to be swallowed in the one-armed bandit again, but I guess we will never know.

coming soon: California and beyond....