Robert and Mike attempt to counterfeit nickels

Robert and Mike’s attempt to counterfeit nickels is the first business venture of their childhood partnership, and its abrupt failure becomes a formative lesson in initiative. The boys mean to make money, but their improvised production line turns that ambition into an illegal scheme: they melt discarded lead toothpaste tubes and pour the liquid metal into plaster molds. Their father stops the venture, yet praises the creativity behind it and urges them not to quit. The episode closes not with a profit but with a new direction: Robert and Mike decide to ask Mike’s father to teach them how to become rich.

From partnership to production

After Robert tells Mike that his father has advised him to learn how to make money, the two boys become partners and spend a Saturday morning thinking up ways to earn it. They are poor only in comparison with classmates who have new bicycles, baseball gloves, and other things the boys want. Their desire is sharpened by the contrast with the children who gather at Jimmy’s beach house; feeling excluded hurts, but the narrator says that hurt helps keep them thinking.

An idea from a science book Mike has read gives the partnership its first business. For several weeks, they go door to door asking neighbors to save their used toothpaste tubes. The adults agree, often with puzzled smiles, but the boys refuse to explain what they are doing, calling it a business secret. The tubes accumulate in a cardboard box beside Robert’s mother’s washing machine, where their growing stockpile begins to look less like a business plan than a household mess.

The production deadline arrives before they have finished gathering all their materials. Robert’s mother objects to the crumpled tubes and gives them one more week before she will throw the pile away. Under pressure, Mike urges neighbors to use up their toothpaste faster, while Robert prepares the production line. Their mother’s threat to reclaim the storage space is the first obstacle the partnership has to solve; rather than abandon the project, the boys hurry it forward.

The counterfeit nickel

Robert’s father arrives with a friend to find the boys working in the driveway. The production line blocks the carport, so he parks at the bottom of the driveway and approaches on foot. The scene’s scattered materials make their ambition visible: plaster dust covers the area, small school milk cartons sit on a long table, and the family hibachi grill glows with red-hot coals. A steel pot rests over the fire.

The boys are melting toothpaste tubes made of lead, not plastic. After burning off the paint, they melt the tubes in the pot and pour the liquid lead, using Robert’s mother’s pot holders, through holes in the tops of the milk cartons. The cartons hold plaster of Paris, mixed with water to form the outer containers for their molds. Robert has knocked over the bag of plaster powder, spreading it across the driveway like snow. The operation is energetic and makeshift, but its materials and method are precise enough to produce a coin-shaped object.

Robert’s father and his friend watch the boys pour molten lead into the plaster molds. When the pouring is done, Robert taps the seal between the halves of a mold with a small hammer and lifts the top. A lead nickel falls out. The reveal transforms what the boys have treated as a business secret into what it is: an attempt to make counterfeit money. Robert’s father’s startled reaction, his friend’s laughter, and the boys’ pride meet in the same moment, exposing the gap between their intention to earn money and the legal meaning of their method.

Shutdown and encouragement

Robert’s father asks the boys to put everything down and sit with him on the front step. He gently explains what counterfeiting means. Mike, shaken by the explanation, asks whether the activity is illegal; Robert’s father confirms that it is. His friend suggests that the boys may have a natural talent, but Robert’s father silences that response with a glare. He does not excuse the scheme: instead, he separates its unlawful result from the ingenuity the boys have shown.

Robert’s father tells them he is proud of their creativity and original thought. The reassurance does not undo the immediate disappointment. Mike and Robert sit in silence for about twenty minutes, then begin cleaning up. The business is over on its opening day, and their first concrete plan to make money ends in a pile of plaster and spent materials rather than a sale.

As Robert sweeps, he says that perhaps Jimmy and the other boys were right that they were poor. His father answers that they are poor only if they give up. He praises the fact that they did something rather than only talking and dreaming about getting rich, and repeats that they should keep going and not quit. The encouragement preserves the boys’ initiative even as the failed venture forces them to face its limits: action matters, but this attempt has not taught them how to make money lawfully.

The next teacher

The failed nickel scheme also exposes what Robert’s own father cannot teach. When Robert asks why his father is not rich, his father says that he chose to be a schoolteacher and that he does not know how to make money. He admits that he cannot help the boys with that question and tells Robert not to ask him if he wants to learn how to become rich.

Instead, he points to Mike’s father. Robert’s father says that they share a banker, who has repeatedly described Mike’s father as brilliant at making money. Mike is incredulous: if his father is so capable, he wonders why their family does not have the nice car and house associated with the rich children. Robert’s father distinguishes visible possessions from financial ability. Jimmy’s father works for a sugar company that is in financial trouble, and his car is supplied by the company; Mike’s father, by contrast, owns warehouses, a construction company, a chain of stores, and three restaurants. The restaurants keep him working late, while his growing business holdings lead Robert’s father to suspect that he is building an empire.

That distinction renews the boys’ enthusiasm. They return to cleaning with new vigor and plan when to approach Mike’s father, whose long workdays make him difficult to catch. Once the cleanup is finished, Mike takes the bus home and promises to call Robert, even if it is late, after he has spoken to his father. The counterfeiting attempt thus ends as a business but opens a path toward instruction: the boys’ ambition survives, redirected from making money out of lead to learning from someone their families believe understands business.

The episode’s later echoes

The nickel attempt establishes an early pattern in Robert’s account: a bold idea is tested through action, meets an unexpected constraint, and becomes useful as a lesson even when it fails to produce money. Much later, Robert describes teaching financial concepts through CASHFLOW, a board game in which a player’s income statement, balance sheet, and monthly cash flow reveal how assets and expenses interact. The game is another way to make abstract money lessons concrete, but it is not the same as the boys’ driveway scheme; the episode’s importance lies in showing the childhood origin of Robert’s preference for learning by doing.

The later teaching also supplies a contrast to the boys’ first encounter with money. Robert argues that fear and desire can drive people into a repeating cycle of work, paychecks, and spending, which he calls the Rat Race. He recalls refusing increasingly large wage offers from Mike’s father, eventually becoming calm when the amount reached five dollars an hour, and explains that delaying an emotional response made it possible to think. The nickel venture is an earlier, less informed form of initiative: the boys act energetically, but do not yet understand the legal and financial framework in which their scheme operates.

Across the book, the episode’s enduring emphasis is not that the boys succeed at counterfeiting, but that failure does not have to cancel their capacity to learn. Their father’s approval is deliberately qualified: he condemns the illegal act while affirming the creativity that produced it. His suggestion to approach Mike’s father converts a shutdown into a change of direction, setting the childhood partnership on a continuing search for financial knowledge.