Sundays on the farm were special days. Most farmers even if they didn't go to church or believe in God considered Sunday a day of rest. My dad was no exception. He rarely worked on the Sabbath, and he never went to church either.

One day he called my sister, who was four years younger, and me to the kitchen table. We were introduced to a special game. On the table were several stacks of shiny Lincoln pennies. Dad asked me if I could count to 100. Of course I could and I proceeded to count out the pretty pennies.

Dad and Sis patiently watched as I counted out 100 of those shining coins on the table. Then he asked us if we would like to have those pretty pennies. Of course we did. Dad said if we wanted the coins we would have to share them equally. Sis and I agreed.

I started to count out my share but Dad stopped me. He said if we wanted those pretty coins we would have to play a game. Well, that sounded okay. We would get the pennies and a game to boot. What could be better?
 
Dad picked up the pennies in his hands and walked out of the kitchen door. We ran after him laughing and yelling for him to give us our coins. We stopped beside him in the middle of the grassy side yard.

Dad said to play this game we had to follow some rules. Sister and I were placed back to back. We had to close our eyes, put our hands over our eyes, and count to 20. While we were counting, Dad said he would throw the hundred shiny pennies out into the yard. Dad said when we found the 100 shiny pennies, we were to stack them into piles of 50 and then knock on the kitchen door.

Dad said he would have a jar with our names on it ready. We could drop our pretty coins into our special jar for safe keeping. We were giggling and counting to 20. Dad shouted he was throwing the pennies into the yard. When we reached 20, we dropped to our hands, opened our eyes and went to our hands and knees to search for the coins.

We didn't realize Dad had left. We wouldn't have cared anyway. I have no idea how long we picked around in that grass for those pennies but we found them all. Sis and I counted them out and knocked on the kitchen door. There was Dad standing with our specially named jars just like he had promised.
 
This little game went on for a couple years. We were getting faster and faster at finding those coins. Then all of the sudden we were in the yard hunting and hunting but always coming up with a penny short every time. Dad would come out of the house and ask why we had not knocked on the door. Then he would help us search for that 100th coin, and sure enough it would be found within a matter of minutes. This game was not played every Sunday but we had filled quite a few of those jelly jars with shiny pennies.