What's a penny really worth?

I remember when we had a houseful of kids. That was in the days when I knew where all of them were going to be spending the next holiday—like Thanksgiving. Now it takes all of them up until the day before to figure out whether they are going to go to the inlaws’ or to my house—”over the river and through the woods” notwithstanding.

But in that bygone household, on any sort of day, the value of various things could be measured by where they were kept.

Things of the most worth like diaries, notes from boyfriends, five-dollar bills and packs of gum were generally kept out of sight and under lock and key if possible.

Level two valuables like homework assignments were kept on the kitchen table, on the desk, in pockets, and occasionally in bookbags.

Sometimes there were slipups like when we kept our watches instead of our homework in our pockets and they got laundered. (Just ask me who makes the best watches.) (Just ask me how homework fares in the heavy-duty cycle.)

The things of least value were kept on the floor. The floor was public domain. Anything found on the floor could be snapped up by an ungrateful public. What was left were things like broken pencils, gum wrappers, playground gravel, lint, and last but not least—pennies.

If you really want to know the value of something, just watch a kid. Will he walk past a dollar bill and not pick it up? Will he walk past a stick of gum? Will he walk past a penny?

The value of a penny is such that no one will pick it up. Well, I will pick pennies up when I clean the level three repository, not because I intend to move them to levels one or two, but because they litter up the place.

The only thing that kept me from throwing them out with the playground gravel is that they were federal property on public domain. I’ve heard that it is a federal offense to destroy or throw out money, and I don’t want to tangle with the feds. I will leave it to them to throw the money around.

So I put the pennies I swept up in a Fleischman’s yeast can or a quart mayonnaise jar. After a while, the jars began to be a clutter too. Mostly at the level two repositories.

Everyone in our house knew that pennies were public property. Whoever wanted them could have them, but not even the kids would expend the time it took to roll the pennies and carry them to the bank.

One day we did get ambitious or poor, and we rolled a quart of pennies and took them to the bank hoping to exchange them for real money. The tellers didn’t want them either.

So what was I going to do with all of those pennies? It occurred to me that I could pay the kids to take them, but it doesn’t seem right to have to pay someone to take money when what it is is money.

From time to time I hear that congress or someone might abolish the penny, so if they ever have a penny referendum, vote against pennies. They are a public nuisance, a waste of good copper, an eyesore and a mess you can’t get rid of.

One week I got lucky though. Someone was collecting change at the high school for a worthy cause. We unloaded a couple of quarts of pennies—a jar for each high schooler–a couple of days in a row. I guess that the charity was happy to get them. I don’t know how they were able to turn them into real money. Maybe they paid the bank to take them.

I had quite a fright that week, though. I noticed a nickel lying on the floor for two whole days. It was in plain sight, not far off the main drag. I finally picked it up and put it in a comeback cup.

Bertha the CEO

Does anybody out there have a company they want taken down? Here’s the deal: I am willing to do it for a lot less than $60 million.

I seem to be eminently qualified.

I don’t really know much about running a big business. I am probably weak in financial analysis and understanding of the markets. I have a poor grasp of financial consequences for overspending, overlending, etc.

I don’t have any highly relevant strategies for producing bottom-line results.

Since there would be a lot more ways to get it wrong than get it right, I don’t think I could accidentally be successful, and with my experience, I could probably run a corporation into the ground more quickly than just any CEO.

I am able to remain insulated from risks by packaging them and handing them up the chain which gives a whole new meaning to the term “passing the buck,” which I can do as well as anyone. I am also creative at making excuses.

What with affirmative action guidelines supporting age and gender, I should look good on paper, if not in the mirror.
Additionally, I have a large pool of potential hirees who are related to me.

And like I said, I am cheap. I could work for ten percent of what the average executive makes. I am willing to operate on a minimum of perks and benefits. I am nearly old enough for Medicare anyway.

Library books are my most extravagant entertainment so I wouldn’t need an expense account.

Even if we are not “too big to fail,” I should be able to evoke a certain amount of sympathy when we topple. One look at me and the government would feel sorry for us and bail us out for sure. And if they didn’t, oh well, what’s a billion or two?

How does this sound: Failure-prone CEO looking for a position in a large high-profile corporation with an elevated implosion potential. Will relocate to any city with a library. Salary rate negotiable but below the accepted standards. Benefits not necessary.

What have we got to win?

All kidding aside, after I land my position, and before I jet to southern California for my first company retreat, there is something I want to do. I want the be the one to send AIG’s execs (past or present) a spam e-mail, the kind that you can’t get off your screen, with big flashing red stars asking if they know what their credit score is?

Did anyone anywhere ask the board of directors that before they spent money they didn’t have on mortgages that weren’t viable? Just checking.

In my pre-CEO life, things like that mattered. I always thought that being able to get a second mortgage didn’t mean you should. Well, I am not only old, but old-fashioned.

“People aren’t going to be able to use the equity in their houses to meet their expenses,” was an observation one news commentator made about the credit mess. Well, you can live in your house, or you can get the equity out. In today’s market, they aren’t necessarily the same thing.

Okay, this is Bertha speaking. I might have misunderstood the expediency of using other people’s money instead of my own. I already said that I have a poor grasp of financial matters. But one thing I have learned: it’s best if no one has to bail you out, because as Jay Leno said the other day, “Here’s the way a bailout works. A failed president and a failed Congress invest $700 billion of your money in failed businesses. Believe me, this can’t fail.”




Bertha the CEO

Does anybody out there have a company they want taken down? Here’s the deal: I am willing to do it for a lot less than $60 million.
I seem to be eminently qualified.
I don’t really know much about running a big business. I am probably weak in financial analysis and understanding of the markets. I have a poor grasp of financial consequences for overspending, overlending, etc.
I don’t have any highly relevant strategies for producing bottom-line results.
Since there would be a lot more ways to get it wrong than get it right, I don’t think I could accidentally be successful, and with my experience, I could probably run a corporation into the ground more quickly than just any CEO.
I am able to remain insulated from risks by packaging them and handing them up the chain which gives a whole new meaning to the term “passing the buck,” which I can do as well as anyone. I am also creative at making excuses.
What with affirmative action guidelines supporting age and gender, I should look good on paper, if not in the mirror.
Additionally, I have a large pool of potential hirees who are related to me.
And like I said, I am cheap. I could work for ten percent of what the average executive makes. I am willing to operate on a minimum of perks and benefits. I am nearly old enough for Medicare anyway.
Library books are my most extravagant entertainment so I wouldn’t need an expense account.
Even if we are not “too big to fail,” I should be able to evoke a certain amount of sympathy when we topple. One look at me and the government would feel sorry for us and bail us out for sure. And if they didn’t, oh well, what’s a billion or two?
How does this sound: Failure-prone CEO looking for a position in a large high-profile corporation with an elevated implosion potential. Will relocate to any city with a library. Salary rate negotiable but below the accepted standards. Benefits not necessary.
What have we got to win?
All kidding aside, after I land my position, and before I jet to southern California for my first company retreat, there is something I want to do. I want the be the one to send AIG’s execs (past or present) a spam e-mail, the kind that you can’t get off your screen, with big flashing red stars asking if they know what their credit score is?
Did anyone anywhere ask the board of directors that before they spent money they didn’t have on mortgages that weren’t viable? Just checking.
In my pre-CEO life, things like that mattered. I always thought that being able to get a second mortgage didn’t mean you should. Well, I am not only old, but old-fashioned.
“People aren’t going to be able to use the equity in their houses to meet their expenses,” was an observation one news commentator made about the credit mess. Well, you can live in your house, or you can get the equity out. In today’s market, they aren’t necessarily the same thing.
Okay, this is Bertha speaking. I might have misunderstood the expediency of using other people’s money instead of my own. I already said that I have a poor grasp of financial matters. But one thing I have learned: it’s best if no one has to bail you out, because as Jay Leno said the other day, “Here’s the way a bailout works. A failed president and a failed Congress invest $700 billion of your money in failed businesses. Believe me, this can’t fail.”

Duct tape to everyone's rescue

By now everyone has heard of Wasilla, Alaska. Being the home of recent Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin is not it’s only claim to fame though. It is also home of “The Iditarod,” and the “Iron Dog,” which seems to be the race Sarah’s “dude” has won.

But then even more interestingly, a few years back it was named the Duct Tape Capital of the World which is pretty good considering they probably don’t make duct tape within a thousand miles of there. I’m surprised you didn’t know that.

There are a few other cities, mostly in Ohio, where they do make duct tape which also claim the title, but Wasilla earned it by being the city whose Wal-Mart store sold more of it in 2002 than any Wal-Mart in the world. According to the Duct Tape Guys, who are the premier duct tape pros, that was 325 miles of duct tape, or the equivalent of 314 feet of tape per Wasilla resident.

I’m not sure what they do with all of it up there, but I read that Wasilla resident Bill Murphy put some of it to good use when he was jumped by a grizzly bear while hunting for moose (the second main past time, next to duct-tape taping, for Wasillans).

No, he didn’t wrap up the bear and tape it to a tree as Sarah Palin would have done, but he did bind up the severe bite wounds to his shoulder which held him together while he rode his four-wheeler back to his pickup and then drove himself to the hospital. Most any Wasillan could have done that, and they all have the duct tape to do it with.

So is it “duct tape” or “duck” tape? I always thought that people only thought it was “duck tape” because the “t” on duct is essentially silent anyway, and they didn’t associate it with the use for which I assumed it was obviously invented which is to hold furnaces and air conditioners together.

Well, actually duct tape has been around for a long time. Maybe longer than duct work. It was originally developed for the military during World War II as a water resistant sealing tape for ammunition cases. The tape, usually black or gray, was made of a sealant-coated fabric. That fabric was similar to a fabric called duck. So it’s “duck” name may be older than it’s “duct” one. Call it what you want. If you say it fast enough, no one will know the difference anyway.

The point is, though, according to Wikipedia, shortly after it was issued to military personnel, it began to be used to repair equipment such as jeeps, firearms and aircraft. I believe American Airlines uses it to repair airplanes today, and NASA does send it into space with the shuttle. My son, the pilot, once used it to mend a hole in the wing of his fabric-covered supercub which resulted when it collided with a stray goose during a power-line-inspection run.

Duct tape is the best friend of all dads whose little boys think they can fix anything. It is the first thing DIYers think of when they have a problem.

So from it’s beginnings it was used to fix things, especially in an emergency. Since then, it has come a ways to its current stature which is that of cultural icon. Of late, it has become the raw material used for manufacturing almost anything. I have seen purses, belts, wallets, notebook covers, Ipod covers, American flags, shoelaces, flip-flops and designer clothing. If you think you are missing some of the possible uses for duct tape, there are books and websites to fill you in. Some people take this very seriously. Myself, I like the security of having a roll in my car for the traditional reason.

Yet even I, who am usually pop-culturally clueless, have joined in and made magic wallets for my grandkids in their favorite colors. They were the hot item at the next show-and-tell.

I don’t know who to credit with this dead-on assessment of duct tape, but it is good: “Duct tape is like The Force. It has a dark side and a light side and it holds the universe together.”

I’m going to go put some on my fridge right now. Shall I use camo grunge or neon pink?

Speaking of fridge, maybe our friends in Wasilla have discovered some way to tap into The Force and harness its energy for producing heat. Could be another well-kept secret. Or maybe they are just using it to hold their furnaces together.

Hole in the road

Why did the chicken cross the road? Well, it left this side of the road, but I didn’t see it surface on the other side.

You know the inevitables—death and taxes. Bertha is adding one to the list. If you talk to anyone who owns a car, you will soon hear a complaint about the condition of the roads.

In the old days, the roads were unpaved, sometimes muddy or sandy and vehicles got stuck. Someone might not come along for hours. But after they paved the roads it was potholes. And don’t worry, someone is right behind you. You just have to keep right on going over, around or through the potholes or get run over.

Out in the county where I live, there are some shining examples. I am pretty good at missing them because most of them have won tenure. But my car still appears on the upper reaches of the front-end alignment frequency chart.

I guess the harsh weather is to blame for most of our potholes, and our weather is in the same place on the weather charts. What can I say?

Just so you know, it is not only a local problem. When we lived on the other side of the state, things were worse. One spring, I’m not kidding, this notice appeared in the Classified Ads of the local paper:

“WANTED. One dead horse to fill the hole on Utah Avenue.” Utah Avenue is a main cross-town artery.

Not all of the holes in the roads are the fault of Mother Nature. A friend of mine was complaining about the manhole covers. Some of them have sunk a little too far to be called covers. Maybe liners. He said, “You know they make rings that they can put on the edges of the casings to raise up the covers. How hard could it be to get some of those?”

So I was reading in another paper about manhole covers. I don’t want to make any suggestions, but apparently in other parts of the country thieves steal the covers and sell them for scrap metal. How do you think it feels to hit an open manhole with your passenger side front wheel? We should be happy.

I have to quote the story though. “According to a report in USA Today, hundreds of covers have been ripped off in several states the last three months—another sign of the sluggish economy.” Is that a pun?

Pun or not, it is a stretch to get my mind around the sluggish part since I thought the manhole covers had disappeared because the price of steel has soared.

My brother, who lives in New Jersey, blamed the weather for his manhole-cover anecdote. You may think it only happens in the movies, but one day it was raining so hard in Hoboken that the manhole covers began to pop. I think those things weigh more than I do. He just tried not to be on top of one when it blew. For your information, black, sticky, gooey material describes the stuff they put in potholes, as well as what comes out of manholes. His advice: When it rains, don’t ever run out of gas on top of a manhole.

Speaking of running out of gas, I told him that I hadn’t ever run out of gas since I got the kind of car that displays the number of miles you have left on your tank. Well, my brother the scientist says, “I don’t know how accurate those devices are though.”

I replied, “What? You’re in research. Do you need me to tell you how to test that? I know how to figure that out. I have let the little gauge get down to ‘0 miles left’ at least three times, and I haven’t run out of gas yet. So I know mine works.”

He said, “Great, but I can’t be conducting those kinds of experiments. I wouldn’t want to run out of gas on the New Jersey Turnpike or anywhere near it.”

We could all use a little device that says “pothole dead ahead,” though, providing it was accurate. Some of those holes are surely big enough to show up on satellite views and be entered into a GPS system.

Bmw or Batmobile

I used to drive a enormous, low-slung 1969 Pontiac. Just so you know, I didn’t drive it in 1969, nor in 1970. In fact, we didn’t own it until about 1985, and I was still driving it in 1990. To be fair about it, underneath the hood was a well-muscled machine with an engine-size of 428 somethings which is impressive I think. I also think that my boys raced it more than once and usually won.

Whether they won any money or not, I don’t know, but it would not have been hard to hustle up some unsuspecting competition, because judging the car by the part outside the hood, you would think that it could do no more than limp.

One Halloween, even my shiny, clean, brand-new red 1990 BMW convertible (with only 300 and something under the hood) went out in costume. It was disguised as a paint-chipped, crunch-fendered, khaki-colored 1969 Pontiac Grand Prix. We called it the Batmobile—not because it was smart enough to catch penguins, but because it was so scary.

And sound effects! The Batmobile could furnish backgrounds for the House of Usher. The passenger door sounded like the most Gothic of iron gates when it swung on its hinges.

The mufflers thumped like Sasquatch running through the swamp. When the speedometer cable squealed and the hood-liner flapped, we had giant man-eating bats fleeing some underground cavern.

In more ways than one, bats have become an important part of the spoken and written lore of the Butterbean family. And I’m not referring to bats in the belfry this time.

Most of the bat incidents involve the person in the family who lives in mortal fear of bats. Some people probably go through life and never see one. Not this family member. Of course bats are nocturnal animals, and so is she, which accounts for her running into them more often than the rest of us.

When she worked as a maid cleaning cabins at a mountain resort, hers was always the cabin with bats in it. When she went out to meditate under the stars, bats flew around her head.

I told the following story already, but I should have saved it for Halloween. In case you missed it, here it is again. If you didn’t miss it, skip down a couple of paragraphs.

One summer night our phobic daughter wrapped up in a blanket and went outside to take a breath of fresh air (check on the movements of the neighborhood). While sitting on the front porch, she chanced to look upward. There among the rafters, a few feet above her head and hanging upside down, was a good-sized bat blinking at her.

She jumped up with a prolonged shriek, ran for the door, wrenched it open and immediately went into a skid on the waxed parquet flooring. Running in a blanket is a bit clumsy at best. With her racing slicks on, she lost traction, and her body rapidly got ahead of her feet. She didn’t quit bodysurfing until she hit carpet. I am happy to say that she was called “safe” at home plate.

My daughter had one other fear besides bats. That was of the Batmobile. It had nothing to do with it’s name. That part was coincidental, but the thought of driving it horrified her. I don’t think she would have driven herself to the hospital in it. That would have been a little too much like being caught dead in it. (She didn’t believe that it was a Beamer in disguise like I did.)

For one last Halloween (this one), the Batmobile is still sitting in the backyard. It still has a crumpled fender. It’s paint is far beyond chipped and is more like crumbled. It’s hood-liner is dragging down onto the seats. Every square inch of its interior has become a mouse metropolis. It’s like something out of Frankenstein the Car.

I suspect that under its hood, though, is an engine that has withstood the ravages of time and can still take on the competition—if not scare it, at least worry it a bit.

After this Halloween, I have to say good-bye to the Beamer in disguise. Someone is buying it. At least part of it. “Of course,” you are thinking. “some speed-freak wants to put that 420-something engine into a drag racer.”

Wrong. I’m not kidding; someone wants the body.

Bertha's Byword explains things

Murphy’s Law is most often stated this way: “If something can go wrong, it will.” Some people take their Murphy’s seriously. There are studies which have tried to prove whether Murphy’s has basis in fact. Well, duh. This is the way Bertha states Murphy’s. There are at least 50 ways to get something wrong and only one way to get it right. So mathematically it’s a wonder anything ever comes out right. Maybe it doesn’t, and we just don’t know it.

When you stop to think about it, Murphy has just about got life explained. Every law governing or trying to unravel life as we know it pretty much falls into a sub-category of Murphy’s.

I want to propose a variation on Murphy’s. We can call it Bertha’s Byword. If someone already has a patent on it, I didn’t know, okay?

It goes like this: If you had two choices, you will invariably wish you had made the other one.

For example—say you have a Saturday afternoon in the late fall when the chores are done and you have some money. (That in and of itself is a set of circumstances that ought to make you extremely wary.)

You also have some friends going skiing and some more friends going to catch the college football game. Don’t mess it up now. These are two pretty good choices.

So if you choose skiing, the chair lift will be broken (best-case scenario,) and additionally, your team will pass for 300 yards and win by 35 points.

Conversely, if you choose football…the scenario could get really bad here. Just how many ways are there for a football game to go wrong?

Turning to the business arena, I was one of those investors who put money into Putnam Group instead of Wal-Mart. You can already guess how that turned out. If I had done it the other way around, I probably could have averted the global economic crisis.

Which brings me to my other real-life story. My daughter and her husband own a reception center in Logan. It has a really nice audio system which sounds great, but it doesn’t have a piano. After three brides in a row had asked about a piano and someone else had wanted to book the facilities for an upscale piano recital, they started looking for a piano. A friend helped them find just the right instrument. It was a gloss black Steinway baby grand which was going for a good price. The good price was $26,000.

So they thought long and hard about that purchase. (My son-in-law as well lives by Bertha’s Byword. He didn’t patent it though.) Would they really book that many more receptions with the piano in the big room? Their friend assured them that they could rent it out for rehearsals at $150 an hour to piano students from the university. So that helped tip the scale. They bought the piano last week. The piano dealer would arrange the financing.

And so the Baby was delivered. They couldn’t wait for the next walk-through. The bride would probably book on the spot.

The next three brides to walk through the facility glowered when they saw the piano.

“Is that piano going to be there? It takes up too much room. I have 18 people in my line. Is there a place to move it to?” From then on, my daughter who weighs 121 pounds, began trying to stand in front of the piano in an effort to hide it.

Well, just like the masked rider on the white horse, the global economic crisis (which I was a little bit glad I didn’t avert) comes to the rescue. Who would have thought? The piano dealer called this week to say that he would have to come and get the piano because he couldn’t get financing for it.

On a Saturday afternoon when I have a choice, I sometimes have a seat to watch a few downs of football on TV (which is about as close to a college game as I ever get) instead of doing the other thing which probably involves some kind of housework. Every time I sit down, my team fumbles the ball. I never get to watch them win until the reruns, and even then I worry.

Double Bubble in the money bin

I guess if I don’t write something about the economic crisis the country is going through I will be the only person anywhere to remain silent on the subject. However, I doubt this will be my only chance. The subject might be relevant for quite a while.

The stock market is “roller-coastering” and who knows when it will settle. Credit has gone somewhere, don’t ask me where. Congress is too busy passing bucks to be passing bills. And the “00s will likely be remembered most for the “great government bail-out.”

All in all, the horizon looks a little bleak. To lighten the mood, and since the whole crisis is about the “flow of cash,” I want to tell you about how my kids learned their first lessons in economics.

The legal tender among our children was chewing gum. If you had it you were rich. If you didn’t you were always trying to get “the government” you give you some.

In our house, the war-to-end-all-wars was fought over chewing gum. We had staff meetings to legislate rules for the proper use and control of the substance.

The components of the modern-day tragedy were two children and one stick of gum. Taking a piece without asking carried penalties usually reserved for horse thieves.

Each child had a well-secured money bin, not for money, but for chewing gum which was traded on the market something like this:

“Will you go upstairs and get my book bag?”

“How much will you pay me?”

“I’ll give you a stick of gum.”

“Only one piece? No way.” (Don’t try to get something for nothing.)

“Then I’ll give you a whole pack on Friday.” (Paying later makes things cost more.)

“Okay, then, I want a ten-pack of strawberry bubble gum.” (Everything has it’s price.)

The traditional form of lending with interest was practiced too.

“Do you have a piece of gum?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I have one?”

“Only if you pay me two back, or three if it takes too long.” (Interest never sleeps.)

Just to show you the regard our kids had for gum, I’ll tell you a story my daughter told me. She said that her best friend had walked all the way to town—about 12 blocks—to buy a pack of gum.

“Ha, ha, ha; she could have walked to the convenience store, but she walked all the way to town. She could have saved four blocks.” (If you work hard enough, you’ll get rich.)

“Yuk, yuk, yuk. That was so dumb.”

I’ll tell you about dumb. Only a gum-greedy capitalist would walk beyond the next room for a stick of the stuff. My daughter didn’t think that it was strange to walk a long way for a pack of gum. She only thought it was strange to walk farther than necessary.

Like the medium of exchange that most people use, gum tends to be unpredictable, and it has a destructive side. (Keep your legal tender in a safe place.)

The similarities end there because it doesn’t slip through your fingers. In fact, once used, it is non-biodegradable and indestructible, and you can’t get rid of it.

If gum gets where it doesn’t belong, you will have to live with it. And so will your children and your children’s children. (Be careful what you want, you may get it.)

Your children will inherit the piece that is stuck to the brass bedpost. Your nephew might end up with the gob that’s under the dining room table, which by the way will be free.

Real money, once you use it just sort of moves around the marketplace and isn’t really used up. This past week would be the exception. But no matter which kind of green you value—neither the most conscientious environmentalist nor the greediest capitalist wants to recycle chewing gum.