When we sit around the campfire comparing the dumbest things we have done (marriages don’t count), I always win with my $2,000 Popsicle story.

The story reminds me that my parents should have put me to death, for a variety of reasons on a number of occasions. They must have been saints.

We were one of the early homes with two working parents. My sainted mother worked as a telephone operator at Jordan Marsh in downtown Boston. The poor woman collected 1,800 Indian head pennies and kept them in a jar hidden (she thought) in the china closet. The china closet was also where they hid the loaded Colt .45 automatic, but that is another story for another time. Suffice to say that the family saga includes the S.S. Pierce deliveryman and the familiar phrase “stick ’em up!”

Summers in West Roxbury, Mass., were luxuriously long affairs with daylong bike trips and setting the peat bog on fire so we could play with the fire engines (another story).

Such a high level of activity would generate a furious thirst by midafternoon. The paper route (Globes, Posts and Records) would return only $3, paid on Saturday. That meager stipend was gone by noon Sunday in a spending pattern that would be repeated for the next 60 years.

The siren song would be heard first from Dent Street, a block away.

The ice cream man is coming!

It was time for the ultimate delicacy, a root beer Popsicle. The familiar sound of the bells on the ice cream truck got closer and closer. Other bike riders dug in their pockets for the 8 cents necessary for the afternoon celebration. We all stared down the quiet street, waiting.

There it was!

The truck was coming down the street. It stopped a few houses away. The tension was unbearable. The mouth was as dry as sand. I had no money. Desperate times called for desperate measures.

The Indian head pennies!

I can still remember the crock jar my poor mother used to store her pennies. There must have been a hundred of them. Surely, she would not miss eight lousy pennies.

I grabbed them and ran outside, just in time. I stupidly asked the ice cream man if he would take “these pennies.”

I can remember his eyes getting bigger and bigger, like Jerry Colona. (Don’t ask.) “Sure, kid, no problem,” he said. Then I got my root beer Popsicle from that magic truck compartment which was steaming, despite the summer heat. The Popsicle was so cold that you had to peel the paper off carefully, after you split it on the curbstone to make two delicious halves.

For the uninitiated, the St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture tells us that Popsicles were a confection made of fruit juice frozen on a stick. In the 1870s, the New York Ross and Robbins company sold something similar, which they called the Hokey-Pokey. In 1924, Frank Epperson, a powdered-lemonade vendor from California, patented a more fully realized version of the product, which he originally named the Epsicle. He sold his patent to the Joe Lowe Corp., which became Popsicle Industries. The chief Popsicle flavors were root beer, grape, orange and cherry. Later variations included the Creamsicle, the Fudgsicle, the Twin Pop and the Bomb Pop, and helped keep neighborhood ice cream trucks such as Skippy and Good Humor in business during the summer. What made the Popsicle line distinctive was the inclusion of the flat wooden stick, allowing the frozen confections to be eaten like lollipops.

People saved these sticks and used them for craft projects, making everything from baskets and boxes to lamp bases.

On the humid streets of West Roxbury, others tried different flavors. Some chose grape (horrible) Popsicles, banana (passable) or cherry (tasteless). Others chose Fudgsicles or even ice cream bars. For me, there were only root beer Popsicles. I also stuck to root beer in my juvenile beverage choice, favoring Richardson root beer in a frosty mug topped off with a round ball of yellow vanilla ice cream.

Man, I can still taste those Popsicles. Once I learned that the pennies could bring me so much pleasure, I used them a few afternoons a week to satisfy my growing habit. If memory serves (it rarely does), the pennies were all gone before my embezzlement was discovered.

Those Popsicles should have been good. According to the folks at eBay, those pennies are now worth anything from $25 to $250 each. That means those 8-cent Popsicles actually cost anywhere from $200 to $2,000 each.

And I thought Rockland’s Primo Restaurant was expensive.

Even they don’t have any $2,000 desserts.

My poor mother.

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.