My wife Mary and I were walking from the grocery store one day in 2019 when we saw a penny on the ground. Mary remembered the old saying, “Find a penny and pick it up. Then all day you will have good luck!” Days later, she noticed another on the ground at church. She handed it to me and said, “Here. Now you will have to write another short story using this penny.” That started an avalanche of short story writing.

Another day, I was moving a load of clothes from the washer to the dryer when a penny fell out of her jeans. When I confronted her with it, she said, “Oops. Looks like you have another tale to tell,” and went back to playing Cribbage on her cellphone. A dull green penny here, a shiny quarter there, and even a dirt-encrusted silver dollar – all found and became central in different stories. 

Friends and neighbors, this quickly got out of hand! My grandson even got into the act, “I found a penny, Granddaddy! Write a story for me.” I was trapped like a bear in a tree surrounded by howling wolves. I capitulated and wrote the boy a story. “Hey, Granddaddy, guess what I found? Another penny!” He could hear me groan over the phone.

In the Fall of 2021, I struggled with any idea for Christmas presents for the boy. What do you get a kid that has more LEGOs than half the population of Texas has? What toy will challenge a kid with a creative mind and a strong desire to learn? What do you get a 7-year-old boy who has access to every Usborne Book in the world?

I answered my own question – a book. I took the ten adventure stories written with him as the main character and made him a chapter book. The chapters were short, and the font size was easy for him to read. Though he was reading beyond a first-grade level then, I still incorporated advanced words to challenge his vocabulary. He found The Adventures of Luke under the Christmas tree, and it was a big hit. Maybe too big a hit?

This year at different times, I have received a penny, two pennies, and even a sack of pennies with a note saying, “Here are more pennies so you can write more stories for me, Granddaddy!” When Luke was here in July, we co-authored a story that he illustrated. I get story ideas from him, and some aren’t too bad. Very few 8-year-old boys have dinosaurs living under a bed, secret vaults under the house, raise monarch butterflies the size of small airplanes, build robots that will load a dishwasher, use metal detectors to find buried treasure, ride Billy goats, and more. The Further Adventures of Luke will have twenty chapters this Christmas, more advanced words will again challenge his vocabulary, and open his mind to new possibilities. It will also challenge his Granddaddy’s mind for Christmas 2023 – I already have two pennies!

I can hear it now, “I found another penny, Granddaddy!”