In our family we were taught that a penny saved in a penny earned. Along with that we learned that our parents money was theirs and not to be touched. My day, Harold, had a cup he kept on his desk for pennies. It was burnished copper with an Indian design etched on the outside of the cup and filled in with red. I wonder who has that cup now. The penny cup was about 3 inches across and about an inch and a half high. It probably held less than fifty pennies. My dad wasn’t really a desk type of guy as generally he worked outdoors doing farm things with the cows, fixing stuff in the shop or working in the fields preparing the soil for planting, then tending to the crops during the summer and finally harvesting in the fall.
When he worked at his desk mostly we didn’t bother him as he might have been concentrating on paying bills, as task I’m sure he disliked. But there were time when he worked at his desk when he whistled up a storm. Not really a tune, but just a happy melody he made up to keep his concentration. It was those time he might let you look at his penny cup and count the pennies.
We all collected coins in our own way. Mom was interested in the dates and where they were minted. She started me on a coin collection. She bought me some folders you could press the coins in that matched the dates and mint location. It filled up pretty good. I don’t know where I received my money as I don’t remember an allowance. Sometimes Aunts and Uncles gave us a dollar or five here and there for our birthdays. We were taught to save them all just in case. I could use that money to trade my parents for coins for our collection. That was really the only reason that Dad would let me look through his coins.
He also had a few silly toys in his top drawer of his desk that he used occasionally to show other children and entertain them when they visited. One of the items was a magic tube. It was black and had a glass top. There was some kind of triangular multi-sided bead that floated in black liquid. You would turn the tube with the glass side down and ask a silly question like “am I going to have a good day today?” Then turn over the tube. The bead would float to the top and you could read the answer, “It is decidedly so.”
Another game he had was a trick wooden box that hid a piece of gum. He had another wooden one with a red pointed round end that he snapped through his fingers to make something happen. I forgot what happened. He sure got a kick out of showing these to kids and tricking them.
For a while I saved my money in a glass jar that looked like an elephant sitting on his back legs. I think this jar had some kind of syrup in it when it was first purchased to may a Kool-Aid type mixture. It must have been used by lots of kids as it came with a slit in the screw on lid to save coins.