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The first thought that occurs to me when I see a nickel is almost always Arlo Guthrie singing "I don't want a pickle, I just want to ride on my motor-sickle." When my youngest brother Danny was a little boy, maybe six or seven years old, he and his friend Jody were big into that particular song and they used to sing it, but I never heard it for myself until years later. It's not one of Arlo's best songs. It's funnny and all, but I've always thought that Arlo is more than a little bit uneven in his work. We saw Arlo perform at Club Passim a year or so ago, and all those years of being stoned have added up.
A nickel isn't much anymore. They could do away with every coin smaller than the quarter, and I don't think it would make much difference anymore. Small change is a holdover from a different time. Here we are at the dawn of the 21st century and still haven't fully shaken off the 19th. I think that really speaks to how slowly change actually happens, and I don't mean nickels. We have become accustomed to rapid change in so many areas of our lives, and we have lost a sense of perspective about the sweep of human history. Fifty years is nothing in the course of history, and yet we perceive things that are five, ten, twenty years past as long-dead. But we can't hide the reality that we change in our worldview much more slowly. How else can you explain the "return" of these imbeciles who call themselves "Conservatives" and "Christians" who seek to sweep away the 20th century? It's not really a return; they never really left. They got ignored, overwhelmed by the flood of other changes that washed through the last 100 years, but they did not perish any more than the nickel or the penny, even though they are becoming just as obsolete and just as worthless.
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