B-Side

Pennies From Heaven

The earliest memory I have of my dad is also the best one.

He’d come home from work, and I’d hear the door, and I’d run to the kitchen. He’d reach down, grab my hands, and swing me — forward, under his legs, and back up again, like a human pendulum. Over and over until one of us ran out of breath. I couldn’t have been more than three or four. I didn’t know anything about him yet — what he worried about, what he dreamed about, what kind of man he was becoming. I just knew that sound at the door meant something good was about to happen.

That’s where he starts for me. That kitchen. Those hands.

The Man Who Thought in Systems

My dad was a tinkerer. Not in a hobbyist, weekend-project kind of way — in a genuine, can’t-stop-his-brain kind of way. He was always looking for the better mousetrap, always penciling something out, always asking: is there a more efficient way to do this?

He reminded me of Christopher Lloyd in Back to the Future. Not the wild hair — just that quality of someone whose mind was perpetually running a few steps ahead of the present moment, turning a problem over, looking for the angle nobody else had found yet.

I remember him telling me about an idea he had, probably in the late seventies: sensors embedded in parking lot concrete that could tell you which spaces were open, so a sign at the street could say three spaces available, fifty feet ahead. He’d call me Dave — always Dave — and say, what do you think? Can we patent that? Is there a market?

He was describing what every airport parking garage does now. He was just forty years early.

But the story I keep coming back to is the paneling job. He decided to panel a room in our house. Bought the materials, but before he bought them he sat down and penciled out every cut. Every piece. Every angle. He calculated his waste in advance, figured out exactly how to sequence the cuts so almost nothing would be lost. When the job was done, the waste was a sliver. Literally — a thin strip of wood and nothing else.

That was him. That was his love language. Not grand gestures. Precision. The satisfaction of a thing done so carefully that nothing goes to waste.

A lot of my own planning — the way I think through a project before I start it, the way I build things in sequence — I got that from watching him work.

The Man Who Watched the Ground

He grew up during the Depression. That never left him. Not as anxiety — more as a kind of permanent, quiet appreciation for what things were worth.

He was good with money his whole life, and he stayed good with it even when he didn’t need to be anymore. He never lost the sensibility. Never stopped thinking about the best deal, the smartest move, the most efficient path. It wasn’t worry. It was just how he was wired.

And he always looked down when he walked.

Which meant he always found pennies.

To a lot of people, a penny on the ground isn’t worth the movement it takes to pick it up. To my dad, that was a statement he couldn’t comprehend. Something of value is something of value. You see it, you pick it up, you put it in your pocket. It costs you nothing and it’s better than leaving it there. He’d find them everywhere — parking lots, sidewalks, store floors — and he’d pocket every one without breaking stride.

I used to smile at it. I didn’t fully understand it yet.

Harbor Freight

Near the end of his life, after the dementia had taken most of what he’d built in his mind — the plans, the calculations, the careful architecture of a life managed well — one thing stayed.

He loved Harbor Freight.

So I’d take him. We’d drive over, walk the aisles, and he’d find things he wanted. I’d pay — we’d moved him off credit cards by then, off anything that could get complicated — and we’d drive home. Two days later, sometimes less, he’d want to go back. He didn’t remember we’d been. I’d return whatever we’d bought the time before, and we’d do the whole thing again.

It gave him so much joy. That was the whole point.

What I’ll never forget is the pennies. I’d help him up to the register, ready to handle the transaction quietly, the way you learn to do. And he’d be reaching into his pocket, pulling out pennies, absolutely certain he was going to cover this. The Depression-era boy, still watching the ground, still certain that what you save is what you have.

I’d lean over to the person at the counter. I’ve got it. And I did. But I’d let him put his pennies on the counter anyway. Because that part wasn’t about the money anymore. It never really had been.

A few days before he passed, he called my brother into the room. He’d been tracking his change — the coins he had accumulated — and he wanted my brother to know: cash that in. Use them for your mom. She’ll need them.

She had enough. She had more than enough. He had planned so carefully for so long that she was covered for twenty-five more years.

But the boy from the Depression never stopped counting. Never stopped making sure. Even at the end, his last act was tucking something away for someone he loved.

Two Pennies on a Ledge

He went first. Seventeen days later, my mom followed.

My brother and I went to her home church the day before her service to do a sound check — we had a video of her life to run, a soundtrack to queue up, things to get right. The audiovisual equipment was in the balcony, up a flight of stairs, that kind of open platform with a low ledge looking out over the sanctuary below.

We got to the top. My brother stopped.

Look.

On the ledge. Two pennies. Side by side.

He said: Dad left these. One for each of us.

I don’t know how they got there. I don’t know how long they’d been sitting on that ledge in a church balcony. I know that we were the ones who found them, the day before we said goodbye to our mother, just weeks after we’d said goodbye to our father.

I took one. My brother took the other. I put mine in my wallet and I’ve carried it ever since.

What You Bury Becomes the Foundation

Four years after they passed, I started building my home in the desert. March 2023. The day they poured the foundation was one of those perfect mornings — warm sun, right temperature, the kind of day that feels chosen.

I knew I wanted something of them in the ground. Not on the surface — in it. Buried under concrete, permanent, part of the structure itself. The north section of the house, where the contemplation porch would be. The place you go to sit, look out over the valley at Joshua Tree, and think.

So I went to my penny collection. Years of picking them up, just like he did — never sorting, never checking dates, just honoring the habit. I wanted to find one penny from 1934. Her birth year. One from 1936. His. One from my own birth year. And one from 2019, the year they both left.

I started sorting through the jar.

There was one penny from 1934.

There was one penny from 1936.

I sat there for a long time looking at those two coins. All those years of collecting without looking. All those pennies dropped into a tin and forgotten. And inside that tin, her year and his year had been waiting the whole time.

I took the four pennies — 1934, 1936, mine, and 2019 — and placed them in the ground before the concrete went down. Sealed them in. Part of the house now. Part of the earth it stands on.

Every time I walk out to that north porch and look out over the valley, I’m standing on top of them. And that feels exactly right.

The Penny Project

That’s what I started calling it in my head. The Penny Project.

If he spent his whole life finding pennies — bending down, picking them up, pocketing them, honoring the small things — then I’d carry that forward. Everywhere I go, I leave one. The Redwoods. Sedona. Wherever the road takes me. I set a penny down somewhere and I think: he came along.

And somewhere along the way I noticed something else. I started looking down when I walk. Just like he did. And I started finding pennies. Just like he did. Because most people don’t pick them up anymore, which means there are plenty to find, which means he’s everywhere if you know how to look.

Seven years after he passed — just this month — I got out of my car to go get coffee. Looked down at the ground by my door. Nothing. Went inside, came back out, put my hand on the door handle, looked down one more time.

There it was. One penny.

Seven years to the day.

I picked it up. Put it in my pocket. Looked up at the sky for a second.

How appropriate.

What He Left

He didn’t leave grand gestures. He left a way of moving through the world — carefully, efficiently, with an eye for what others walk past. He left the lesson that something worth finding is worth the two seconds it takes to reach down. He left two pennies on a church balcony ledge when we needed them most.

And he left me looking down when I walk. Finding what he left behind. Leaving some of my own.

That’s the remix. He found them. I leave them. Somewhere out there, someone’s going to bend down and pick up a penny I left in the Redwoods, and they’ll have no idea they just got a little piece of my dad.

But they did. They absolutely did.

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