The One Palm Beach Penny Madoff Didn’t Steal

I was taking my Surly Long Haul Trucker out on its inaugural run today. Son Adam and buddy Keefer were along on the ride to the Palm Beach Inlet to check it out. I have to admit that it was a bit traumatic when I rolled it out to the street the first time and saw lawn dirt sticking on the tires.

About the penny

We were just about to turn onto the Lake Trail bike path when I locked down the brakes.

Right there, embedded in the concrete sidewalk, out in plain view was one of the few pennies Bernie Madoff didn’t make off with in Palm Beach, if you can believe the news stories.

Adam had a great idea

He said, “If any of us get involved in some kind of cloak-and-dagger escapade and we need to hook up, just place a call from a phone booth and say, ‘Meet me at The Penny.'”

I hope nobody from Homeland Security was eavesdropping.

4 Replies to “The One Palm Beach Penny Madoff Didn’t Steal”

  1. The Penny’s location has now been compromised. We will need to find a new place to meet up. The crow flies at midnight. I repeat: the crow flies at midnight.

    Over and out.

  2. It might be good to note one other detail… phone booth?!!? I believe that is an historical item. We may need to borrow the bat signal.

  3. We could tell you where the phone booth is located, but that would be another point of compromise as Son Adam has pointed out.

    The phone booth location is on a need-to-know basis.

    Reminds me of the old days before cell phones when people carried audio pagers. You’d dial a phone number, wait for a tone and then speak your message.

    We knew from our own pagers that they were in a specific block of phone numbers, so unnamed individuals would call them at random and leave messages like, “Leave the money under the park bench” or “The drop is tonight.”

    Of course, if it was a single photographer on a hot date, we’d speak a message like, “Call your wife. The baby’s sick.”

  4. I did have one concern: that Madoff might Google his name, find this post and sue me for defamation of character.

    That brought to mind this old Abe Lincoln story:

    When Abraham Lincoln asked Thaddeus Stevens whether his fellow politician, Cameron Simon, was an honest man, Stevens told the President:

    ‘He wouldn’t steal a red-hot stove.’

    An apology was demanded and Stevens agreed to retract the comment.

    ‘I said that Cameron wouldn’t steal a red-hot stove. I now withdraw that statement.’

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