Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories.
–––
During the early 1940s, if you asked most kids what their favorite thing was at the Union County Fair, they would probably say, “the rides,” you know, the Ferris wheel, the Tilt-A-Whirl and things like that. I liked those rides and I rode on them all, but my favorite thing at the fair wasn’t the rides. It was the “Arcade.”
It was a large tent full of coin-operated games and similar things. For example, one of my favorite games featured a miniature boxing ring, maybe three feet square. Inside the ring were two boxers, about 10 or 12 inches tall. Two kids played the game at the same time. Each controlled one of the boxers, using knobs that moved his boxer around. Each player could also control the arms of his boxer, throwing punches at the opponent.
The object was to knock your opponent’s boxer down. To do that, you had to hit him squarely on the chin. When you did that, it knocked that boxer flat on his back and a loud bell rang.
Most of the coin-operated games in the tent were the same every year. But one year, when I was in the fifth grade, there was something new. It wasn’t really a game. It was a machine that took two coins. One coin slot was where you put a dime to run the machine. Then you put a penny in the other slot. When you pressed the “start” button, the machine swallowed the penny and you could hear the gears grinding inside.
The machine smashed the penny into a thin oval shape, less than half its normal thickness. At the same time, it embossed an American flag at the top of the oval. And directly below the flag, it embossed the “Pledge of Allegiance.”
I thought that was great, so I got a penny and a dime, and inserted them into the machine. In only a minute or so, it turned my penny into a wonderfully patriotic keepsake, which I carried in my pocket for a long time.
Maybe a week or so later, I was showing that penny to a friend of mine named Bill Porter. He really liked it, and he wanted to trade something for it. But I told him I wanted to keep it.
I have mentioned Bill in several of these columns. He was the kid who had a special relationship with wild animals. I can’t tell you how much I’ve learned about possums, and squirrels, and even snakes from Bill. He knew more about wild animals than anyone else I ever met.
Bill knew a lot of other things too. For example, he told me he knew how to flatten pennies, and make them even thinner than my penny. He couldn’t emboss the flag or the Pledge of Allegiance, but he said he could make them so thin I wouldn’t believe it.
He said all he had to do was lay a penny on a railroad track and let a freight train run over it. I was a little skeptical of that, but one Saturday, as I was finishing my paper route, I heard a train whistle just as I was crossing the railroad tracks on Maple Street. The train was maybe half a mile or so up the track.
I took a penny from my pocket and laid it on one of the rails, maybe 10 yards west of Maple Street. Then I sat in the grass and watched as every car in that train ran over it. You wouldn’t believe how thin it made the coin, and it was about the size of a silver dollar.
Bill was a year younger than I was, but over the years, I learned a lot of important stuff like that from him. He was a pretty smart kid.
Those wishing to contact Bill Boyd can e-mail him at bill@davidwboyd.com