By Doug Draper
“Every time it rains it rains
Pennies from heaven.
Don’t you know each cloud contains
Pennies from heaven.
You’ll find your fortune falling
All over town.
Be sure that your umbrella is upside down.”
From the 1936 Arthur Johnston/Johnny Burke song ‘Pennies From Heaven’, first made popular by Bing Crosby.
Well of course that old song goes back to the Great Depression times of the 1930s when a penny could still buy you one or two books of matches, some penny candy or maybe even a boal of soup for a starving hobo.
In Canada and U.S., the modest penny is losing all respect.
A penny really meant something then, and I can remember listening to parents and grandparents that lived through those times. A penny meant enough to them that they sometimes talked about a term I grew up with in my first years of life in the 1950s and 60s called “penny pinching.”
Can you imagine pinching a penny now? Who is doing that in an age when so many of us, who would not bother stooping down to pick up a penny on the sidewalk, are blowing ourselves into personal bankruptsy swiping credit and debit cards.
A lack of ‘cents’ or sense may be the reason a committee of Canada’s un-elected Senate is now floating a recommendation to get rid of the penny. And there have been moves in the United States to do the same thing, even though good ol’ Abe Lincoln is stamped on that copper piece, for God sake!
Call me a sucker for pennies but all of that penny pinching from the past reminds me that there was a time when pinching pennies wasn’t such a bad idea. Maybe we would not collectively be in the financial mess we are now in as countries if we were still counting pennies instead of millions or billions or trillions of dollars?
In the case of Canada’s recent move to eliminate the penny, Richard Neufeld, deputy chair of the Senate committee, said “the fact is the penny is not much use anymore.”
That’s an interesting comment isn’t it?. Maybe we ought to apply this same logic to the Senate and get rid of this un-elected body that isn’t much use for anything other than providing a gold-plated feeding trough to Liberal and Conservative Party hacks.
I don’t know about you but I’d rather count my pennies than keep the Senate. Share your comments below.
(Visit Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to our greater binational Niagara region.)
Niagara At Large 
I have a collection of pennies even US pennies, some made in wartime made of zinc, I concur with those useless beings, cluttering up the Senate, they are’nt worth a plug nickle never mind a penny,I remember the old British pennies as big as a Loonie, as a paper boy my pockets would be loaded down with them, they made strong pockets in those days. Our language would be poorer without references to the lowly penny, penny for your thought’s Doug.
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OH…love the penny. I remember rolling them and the time it took to do it. It was worth it though. In a yr or so you could have about $100.00 saved. Way back then that was a lot of money.
The senate reminds me of the two old fellas on kermit the frog … lol..
Have a great day. Keep the thoughts coming.
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