A Sudden Flashback to Childhood

Two "quarter" slugs and a "fifty cent" slug
Two "quarter" slugs and a "fifty cent" slug

Does anyone remember slugs? I’m not talking about the slimy garden gastropod, but the galvanized steel disks that resembled coins that were punched out of electrical conduits during construction of houses and other buildings. For a portion of my childhood (the Rusty Cook, Danny Ivory, Crosby Park Elementary days, for those keeping score), we lived in a new sub-division in Lawton, Oklahoma. I think it was called Pressboard Estates. Anyway, the houses being built all around at breakneck speed to accommodate the influx of soldiers at nearby Fort Sill were strewn with slugs, which looked and felt a little bit like money. We collected them, since we played in the half-built houses when the workers went home.

Today I photographed the new Pontotoc County Justice Center the new multi-million-dollar jail in Ada), and there were slugs all over the place. I asked one of the construction guys if they still called these things slugs, and he said they did. I collected a couple, since they reminded me of my childhood.

3 Comments

  1. I wanted to thank you for posting the image and story about the metal slugs discovered at the construction site. I too used those as coins in my youthful capers for many… many years. I recently tried to explain to someone what I was talking about, not knowing the name, and spent hours online trying to interpret my needs to search engines. Unfortunately, words like “Metal”, “Round”, “etc” are in great supply in looking for nearly endless things. Ready to give up, I stumbled across your blog and to my absolute delight found not only a great picture of them, but a kindred story.
    Thank you again for posting, that little walk down memory lane means the world to me!

    D.M.

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