More Signs of the Times

Earlier this week, in my pocket change, I found a wheat penny. Wheat pennies have the image of two stalks of wheat stamped on the obverse side, where modern pennies have the Lincoln memorial. Nowadays they are scarce and maybe somewhat valuable, and as coin collectors hoard them they are becoming scarcer and more valuable (perhaps). This one in my pocket change is worn from years of apparent penny-pinching and bears the date 1929, the year of the last great depression.

This morning, as I was getting the oil in my car changed, I witnessed a drug bust on a street corner of my pretentiously upscale, suburban bedroom community. The county officer making the bust was very business-like and no-bullshit, definitely getting the job done. He smashed some sort of paraphernalia under his heel as the two perps, already in handcuffs, watched, then he made one of them deposit the smashed-up bit of paraphernalia in a nearby trash can. The perp making the deposit looked very unhappy. I'm not really sure what to make of this observation.