Time to give her a break?

Perhaps it’s time to give Lady Godiva a break.
After all, she’s been with me for more than 50 years. And her image is getting fainter by the day.
The summer that I was 11, my family spent several days camped at a small, privately-owned campground, one of those mom and pop things with about a dozen campsites.
Because we were there several days, my sister Louise and I got to know the wooded area around the campgrounds as well as the wildlife that inhabited it. It was our playground for endless hours.
Near the end of our stay, an elderly lady staying in a trailer on the grounds came to us with an urgent request. Her dog had disappeared. Could we find it?
I succeeded in doing just that, mostly because I knew the woods as well as her dog did.
A little time later, she called me to her trailer and asked me to sit on the step.
She then proceeded to give me my reward. It was a collection of coins she had used while teaching geography and history. None of the coins were valuable. It was mostly a show-and-tell collection, but I loved it.
Some of the coins would be shunned by any collector. They were damaged. A neat little silver sixpence bearing the face of Elizabeth I and the date 1567 might have been worth something, except for the fact that somewhere in the distant past a schoolboy had placed it on the rails and let a train run over it. Queen Elizabeth I was as flat as a pancake.
My favorite coin was also damaged. It had had a hole drilled in it.
The coin was a Coventry halfpenny bearing the date 1793. Apparently there was a time that the Royal Mint didn’t make enough low value coins, so various regions minted their own.
Issued in Warwickshire, England, it featured Lady Godiva, nude upon her horse, on one side with the words, “Pro Bono Publico,” which translates as “For the public good.” On the back, there was a version of an elephant and castle design that bore little resemblance to a real elephant.
Today, a similar coin in great condition might sell for $25 or maybe even $50.
But with a hole in it about a quarter of an inch from Lady Godiva’s head, my version would probably top out about $12.
And that’s before taking into account the damage I’ve done over the years.
About 35 years ago, as a birthday gift, my wife bought a silver chain and attached it to the Coventry halfpenny.
I’ve worn it around my neck virtually every day since.
The elephant and castle have nearly disappeared from wear against my chest. I’ve always worn it with Lady Godiva facing outwards, however, so she’s in pretty good shape as is her horse.
Now and again, I think of retiring her, putting her in a box of miscellaneous junk and broken watches on my dresser.
But inevitably, when I start to leave the house and find that Lady Godiva’s not hanging around my neck, I have to retrieve her and put her where she belongs.
She’ll be there, I suspect, for the rest of my life.[[In-content Ad]]