My dad loved pennies, especially those with wheat. Those were the pennies he grew up with in Iowa and he didn't have many. When I was a kid, Dad and I would go for walks together. We'd spy coins along the way. Whenever I picked up a penny, he'd ask, "Is it a wheat?" It always thrilled him when we found one of those special coins produced between 1909 and 1958, the year of my birth. He told me he often dreamed of finding coins. "I have that dream too!" I told him. It was our secret connection. Dad died in 2002. One grey day, not long after his death, I was walking down Fifth Avenue and I found myself in front of the oldest church in Manhattan, which my father had been attending. I was greeted in warmly. The song was Dad's favorite, one we'd sung at his funeral. After the service, I walked out, stepped onto the sidewalk--and there was a penny. I picked it up, and sure enough, it was a wheat, a 1944, a year my father was serving on a ship in the South Pacific. Then, wheat pennies began turning up on the sidewalks everywhere. I got most of the important years: his birth year, the war years, the year he met my mom, the year they got married. But, no 1958 penny-my year. The next Sunday, after the service, I was walking up Fifth Avenue and spotted a penny in the middle of the street. It was a busy street, but I risked my safety and got it. A wheat! There was my birthday.  _ How did the author find the penny with his year?
He searched hard and found it. He dug in the street in order to get it. He sang a religious song in order to find it. He found it by chance but got it by trying hard.