Time Marches On...

Psalm 90:10
New American Standard Bible (NASB)

As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years,
Or if due to strength, eighty years,
Yet their pride is but labor and sorrow;
For soon it is gone and we fly away.

Heads you win!

This weekend I spent a little time in the garden using hay to mulch around potato and tomato plants to discourage weed growth.  It is a technique I learned that has almost made weeding a thing of the past.  Mulching also conserves soil moisture and reduces the amount of time that I have to spend watering plants.

As I was putting down the hay into thick mats around the plants, something caught my eye right next to the stem of a Mortgage Lifter Tomato plant.  It was the nickel you see in the palm of my hand in the photo above.  Since Benjamin is our resident numismatist, I brought it to him.  The nickel was old and discolored from being in the ground for so long.  It has a 1962 date on it and is in very bad condition due to being in the ground for so long. There were 97,384,00 of these 1962 nickels minted and in circulation, so really the value of this coin will not 'lift my mortgage!'

I was born in 1966 so the coin was minted a few years before my time.  I'll turn 49 years old this October and the nickel I found by the Mortgage Lifter tomato is 53 years old - more than half a century ago.  Time flies, doesn't it?  Everything changes. Tracy Lawrence sings a song about that very thing.  It is hard to imagine the amount of change we've seen in a relatively short period of time.

Although the nickel isn't particularly valuable at all, I spent my lunch break doing some valuable (to me anyway) research on what was going on in the world when the 1962 Jefferson nickel was minted, and I used these 2 websites to find out about events that occurred during 1962: http://www.348-09.com/1962flash.html & http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/1962.html:

Here we go:

In 1962 the median household income was $6,000
In 2015 the median household income is $54,203

A new house in 1962 cost $15,000
A new house in 2015 costs $277,400

A gallon of gas in 1962 cost $0.25
A gallon of gas in 2015 costs $2.25

Pop Culture:

• "The Beverly Hillbillies" TV show debuted on CBS in 1962
• "The Lucy Show" starring Lucille Ball premiered in 1962
• "Big Girls Don't Cry," by the Four Seasons topped the music charts
• The Beatles recorded their first single, "Love Me Do" (you're humming it, aren't you?)
• Marilyn Monroe (Norma Jeane Mortenson) was found dead by drug overdose
• The "Mashed Potato" and the "Watusi" were popular dances
• Ford introduced the fourth generation "Fairlane," a mid-sized model
• The first Wal Mart opened
• Polaroid introduced a new color film print that develops in 60 seconds (remember waving it in the air?)
• The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 652
• Eggs cost $0.32 per dozen
• Tuition to Harvard University was $1,520

Notable Events:

• President Kennedy instituted an embargo on all imports from Cuba,
• The Cuban missile crisis occurred, pushing us close to nuclear war with the Soviet Union
• John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth

Tails you lose!

And that is what was going on in 1962 when the nickel in my hand was minted. We're in a time of rapid change.  The nickel I found in the garden has reinforced to me to value the time and don't take a day for granted.  Like the introduction to the Days of our Lives Soap Opera used to say (does it still say that?):

"Like sand through the hour glass, so are the days of our lives."