As final penny is minted, pieces of our history fade into memory

The news that the last American penny has been minted feels a bit like watching an old barn finally sag to the ground.

Sure, it makes sense, because after all, a penny costs about four cents to make. But there’s something comforting about a coin that jingled through two centuries of life on Main Street.

Every penny counts, especially when it’s the kind of coin that’s seen Sunday suppers, county fairs, the penny carnival at the grade school and fishing trips to the creek.

The first U.S. penny appeared in 1787, back when the country was still figuring out what it wanted to be when it grew up.

Over the next 200-plus years, that little copper coin became a pocket-sized companion, a witness to family picnics, harvest festivals and school lunches.

Soldiers, factory hands, clerks and kids all carried it. It hid in mason jars, cluttered drawers and somehow turned up in the cupholder of your truck, even if you swore you didn’t put it there.

Who hasn’t listened to the sound of a couple of pennies tumbling in the dryer with the Wrangler jeans from whose pockets those pennies came?

Because a penny saved is a penny earned, I fish them out and drop them in the old Prairie Farms milk jar on the kitchen counter with other loose change.

Thinking back to that first minting and all the redesigns since is like flipping through old family photos. From the Indian Head to the Wheat penny, from soaring eagle to Lincoln’s steady gaze, each design was a snapshot of where the nation’s heart was.

Why retire it now? Many people will tell you that money is now invisible. Transactions happen with a tap or a swipe.

Kids today may never know the thrill of tucking a coin under a pillow for the Tooth Fairy, tossing one into a wishing well, or checking a date on a penny for a lucky coincidence.

And yet pennies always sneaked into our personal stories. Pennies from heaven, they seemed, landing on porches, along dirt roads, or hiding in the hayloft.

The penny also taught life lessons. Families counted them on quiet evenings, kids learned to save pennies in piggy banks and some became lifelong penny-pinchers. I know I am not the only one who played penny poker with cousins at Grandma’s kitchen table.

Now, as the last penny rolls off the press, it is more than a coin retiring; it’s a ritual fading. With an estimated 114 billion in active circulation and another 100 billion or so tucked away in jars and couch cushions, it will be a while before the penny disappears.

The sayings — worth every penny, penny for your thoughts — they’ll linger, but they’ll be about a relic, not a coin clinking in your pocket.

Missing the penny is really missing our yesterdays: buying penny candy at the dime store in town, counting loose change on the kitchen floor and wishing on fountains.

Every penny counts, and even as it retires, it leaves behind a trail of stories, laughter and small but meaningful moments that remind us why the tiniest things often matter the most.

That’s my two cents.