Found On Lark Street

When I was very little, we'd sometimes go shopping at the massive old Montgomery Wards out in Menands.  Once, I picked up a penny off the railroad tracks that ran across one of the parking lots.  At least one train had passed over the coin and bent it into the shape of a taco shell.  I kept that unusual penny for years, somehow lost it, and wish I still had it.

This penny, however, is the most battered I've ever seen.  At first, I thought it was just caked with dirt, but a closer look shows how damaged the cent is.