I had this music stuck in my head the entire day, it got louder the closer we got to the tracks. Play it as you read for added fill-in-the-blank-ness.



This really seemed perfect. If you know me, you know we have a collection of smashed pennies. The Captain has been aggregating flattened pennies since he was too young to drink. There's something very satisfying about seeing currency smashed.






In this mighty paw, some volunteers are preparing to be launched like monkeys into space.

We began with something like eighty pennies. I didn't count as I don't have a head for numbers.





Here, across from Home Depot the spot where the plot got hot. We found two tracks side by side. One presumably heading east, the other west.




The missus and I began lining them up. I took care to keep an even number on each rail, in case it really wasn't just an urban legend. Heatherlynn who had never once heard of this, just started placing them at random spots, like some sort of crazed, penny-placing monkey. This first arrangement had twelve on each set of tracks.




The coins, lining up into infinity, paused to reflect on their fate. Some wondered how Honest Abe got the nickname of Rail Splitter.




We hear the bells and the gates drop. I take a second to see if the rails really do vibrate from an oncoming train.

(We got honked at a bunch.)



six shiny coppers
it's train versus verdigris
to make a new sheen




Realizing that we had no chance of derailing a train, we got a little cocky and sent more pennies to Valhalla. We lay down about 30 pennies altogether this time. One has more to fear for their shins than a train coming off the track.




Our rate of recovery was smaller on this attempt.




Although the old men certainly put up a fight. Here's where one bit into the rail.




I didn't realize how easy it is to lose pennies after a train has been at them. They get shivered off the rail by the train, and more often than not end up buried in the gravel. Looking for your missing pennies, and placing new ones can get hairy when the trains go by every 15 minutes.



The experiment yielded twenty pennies, not counting these two survivors. If you view the original image file, you can see that the top of these pennies look as if they've been lightly gnawed.




While looking for pennies, I came across two other items I considered flattening.
The first was this thing. At first I thought it was a face. I'm not sure if I'm relieved or disappointed that it was just a beef tongue.




The second was this railroad spike.




We never found the rest of the pennies. I'm guessing that, angered by the desecration of his likeness, the ghost of Lincoln grabbed up what he could and took them home to give them a salt and vinegar bath.