When I taught myself how to engrave
silver conchas I practiced on coins. Most of it was foreign coinage but
occasionally I'd practice on U.S. coins. And yes, it's legal as long as a
person doesn't try to defraud anyone. Turning nickels into quarters
would be a good example. This is why little kids who squish pennies on
railroad tracks aren't arrested and thrown in the slammer.
Back
when homeless people were called "hobos" some tramps used nails to
engrave on buffalo nickels and produced remarkable art they'd then trade
for a meal. Today such coins are called "hobo nickels" and they can be
quite beautiful and very valuable.
While
the hobo artists turned the faces on nickels into remarkable likenesses
of Marylin Monroe, clowns, skeletons, cats and self-portraits, I turned
my nickels into cowboy coinage. You should see the look on people when I
hand them one of my coins with the head of a horse where Abraham
Lincoln (penny), Thomas Jefferson (nickel), FDR, (dime) or George
Washignton (quarter) should be. My favorite coins to engrave on are
newer dimes because they haven't been made of real silver since 1964 and
if you scratch one your mark will turn to copper and you can get
remarkable two-tone effects.
In the
course of turning George Washington and his cronies into cowboys I made a
rather remarkable discovery: all I had to do was engrave a cowboy hat
on all the former Presidents and every single one looked much more
handsome. This was especially true of Abraham Lincoln who, let's be
honest, had a face that could keep the crows out of 100 acres of corn.
I
was mesmerized by how much better people look in cowboy hats. I
gathered up all my wife's magazines and drew cowboy hats on everyone
from Queen Elizabeth to the entire Kardashian clan and they all looked
better. Even Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Nancy Pelosi, who both need
extra large shopping carts when they shop in the beauty-aid aisle of a
drugstore, looked better. And if that isn't conclusive proof that
everyone looks better in a cowboy hat I don't know what is.
I
even went to the store and bought some magazines for men and drew
cowboy hats on all the males which were surprisingly few and far between
because most male magazines are filled with photos of guns, trucks and
naked women. Everyone from Snoop Dogg to Miss January looked better in a
cowboy hat. And I hope this isn't blasphemous but may I say that even
the Pope looked better in a Stetson.
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