In these times of economic uncertainty, is it a sin not to pick up a penny?

All my forebears - veterans of the Great Depression - would answer an emphatic "yes."

Understandably so. The average hourly wage in America in 1933 was 43 ½ cents.

But 75 years later, there has never been a coin in circulation in the United States worth as little as a penny.

Fact is - because of inflation - a nickel today commands about what a cent was worth in 1972.

So, couldn't I just pick nickels off the ground?

The question arises because I was cleaning the garage the other day and lifted up a cardboard box that belongs to my 29-year-old son; he lives in California now. The bottom fell out of the carton and thousands of dimes, nickels and pennies went cascading across the concrete floor.

Until recently, that box had been in a self-storage unit I rented. That means for a couple of years, I was paying to store Michael's dimes, nickels and cents.

On my hands and knees, I scooped up all the dimes and nickels, but swept the pennies into a dustpan. Yet I just couldn't bring myself to dump them in the garbage can.

So there they sit, in a dusty little pile next to the trash bin - prisoners of my cents of guilt.

See, when I was a kid I used to visit my Uncle Fred and Aunt Hazel in Soda Springs. Fred was a coin collector, and during the winter months he'd buy every penny the First National Bank could spare and sort through them looking for the Holy Grail of numismatics: the 1943 copper cent.

Today, one of those rare coins can fetch thousands of dollars. Back in the 1950s, it would bring several hundred - but still worth poring over many thousands of pennies.

Uncle Fred did the sorting; I did the wrapping - stuffing 50 cents in each paper coin wrapper. I came to loathe the left side of Abraham Lincoln's face.

Worse, the head teller at the bank was a stickler for accuracy. She'd actually spot-check the rolls of pennies Fred returned to make sure there were 50 - not 49, not 51 - cents in each.

I couldn't bring myself to roll Michael's pennies any more than I could throw them away.

So I went to the post office.

My son will be $37.37 richer any day now.

Assuming the box doesn't break open again.

In my column Wednesday about the woes of former Boise State, University of Idaho and Idaho State football coaches who make it to the National Football League, I left out a winning coach with an Idaho pedigree: John Fox, head coach of the Carolina Panthers.

Fox, who coached defensive backs at BSU in 1980, has a 162-144 record as head coach of the Panthers and as an assistant coach with the New York Giants, Los Angeles Raiders, San Diego Chargers and Pittsburgh Steelers of the NFL and with the Los Angeles Express of the now-defunct United States Football League.

Steve Crump can be reached at 735-3223, or scrump@magicvalley.com. Hear him live on KLIX-1310 AM at 8:30 a.m. on Fridays or on the Web at http:///wwww.magicvalley.com/opinion.