Can I have two chain rings

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The cranks on my old Takara that I am fixin to make into a fixie are old cottered Suginos but seem to be in decent shape. The problem is if I want to have just the 40 tooth chain ring I have to get new cranks because only the 52 chain ring is attached to the cranks and the 40 tooth is bolted to the 52. The question: can I just leave both chain rings on and use only the 40 tooth one? It won't look terribly cool, but it should not be a problem.

Anyone else do this?

Yes, you can do that. You might even want to grind the teeth off the 52T ring to give it a cleaner look.

Cottered cranks suck, and I think they're worse on fixies. Mine always loosesed up on rides and I would have to keep tightening them and I finally said screw this and got a square-tapered one and a cartridge bottom bracket. I think it might have had to do with the back-pressure of pedaling or something but maybe they didn't have this problem in the old days.

I didn't have this problem on my three-speed bike. The only reason I still have a cottered crank on that is it has cool letter cutouts on it that spell the brand of the bike.

Cottered cranks suck, and I think they're worse on fixies. Mine always loosesed up on rides and I would have to keep tightening them and I finally said screw this and got a square-tapered one and a cartridge bottom bracket. I think it might have had to do with the back-pressure of pedaling or something but maybe they didn't have this problem in the old days.

I didn't have this problem on my three-speed bike. The only reason I still have a cottered crank on that is it has cool letter cutouts on it that spell the brand of the bike.
I think you are right. I submitted and replaced my cottered cranks with square tapered 8 speed dura ace cranks. I'm definitely happier!

both of my chainrings were attached to the cranks, I fixed that with a hacksaw, eventually i'll get a new crank arm so i can change the chainring, but for now it works

i still run the stock cottered crank on one of my fixes...however i opted to remove the inner ring and just deal with the gigantor 52t...it's paired with an 18t cog so it isn't to unbearable...but yeah...cottered cranks do suck...