11/3/25: A Warm Monday in the Old Pueblo

One great thing about living in Tucson is the mild winters.  Those of you up north or back east probably don't want to hear me tell you that we are in the mid 80s this afternoon.  The sky is clear with a few clouds here and there, and the desert is just as beautiful as it ever was.

There really isn't much in the way of news to pass along, so it's going to be random thoughts this afternoon.

One of my retirement projects has been re-reading an anthology collection of history articles back when I was taking History at Evergreen Valley College in San Jose.  We had a great history teacher, a Mr. Ron Zarcone, who was a gifted lecturer and made it interesting.  I have kept almost all of my college textbooks since, and these two anthology volumes were on the re-read list.  I haven't read these since 1977.  Although all were not assigned reading, all of them are interesting, as I am working my way thru articles of what Christopher Columbus really knew before sailing across the ocean, details about indentured servitude, and the Salem Witch Trials.  It makes me wish I had continued studying history after college, and although I have read some books about history I have only scratched the surface.  That's one favorite activity.

Another is going thru my coin collection, but that's been on pause these past few weeks.  I have had to work on two necessary projects recently, and one was taken care of last week.  The other big one?  Not much left to do on that one except for a phone appointment with a senior manager helping to get my second pension activated.  

And as you might guess, ham radio has kept me busy too.  We had really great band conditions during a major worldwide contest the last weekend of last month, and I picked up two new countries.  The 10 meter band was the best I've ever heard it in a half century of this hobby.  A total of 48 countries were worked, thanks to the sunspots and low geomagnetic activity.

I said half a century.  It isn't lost on me that I have many memories that are half a century old or more.  I was still in high school, taking electives in electronics, and fifty years ago at this time we were preparing to move from Virginia to California.  I did not intend to stay in San Jose for as long as I did, but a lot of the memories there are good too, and two lifetime friends were made there.

Now here I am in Tucson, retired, and still not missing work.  It was a great field to be in and I lived really well because of it.  I don't miss a lot of the corporate crap that I went thru.  It was fun, but there were times when it was brutal.  Now I go back to it if I want to, and this time in an advisory capacity.  The thought of doing that is intriguing, but not until I catch up on some things and do some more fun stuff.

With that, I think it's time to wrap this post up.  

Where Things Are Now..........and Some Interesting Family History

 I have been intending to post these past couple of weeks.  With this evening being one of those rare ones that are short of distractions I have an opportunity to catch up, so lets get going.  

The first part is Where Things Are Now.  That is, where they are in my life.  I am in week number four of the new job and my first thought to pass along that it's nice to be doing real work again.  When I was in the Navy TechRep office, opportunities to make technical decisions were rare.  I can only recall making one, and I can't remember what it was now.  In that role we were facilitator between a defense contractor and a Navy Program office for a variety of projects.  It was paperwork, attending meetings, and sitting around doing a lot of nothing.  I hated that, and I kept asking for more things to do.  That got me noticed for performance review time, as that I got an "Outstanding" rating and the maximum raise package.

Now the pendulum has swung the other way as far as workload goes.  I'm pretty swamped.  My first two weeks were training, and I'm still in training in the OJT sense.  I've never been a Production Test Engineer before.  I have some understanding of factory flow, but I haven't worked in a manufacturing capacity since 1985.  I've been development, I've helped transition projects to get ready for production, and I've done some field testing of equipment.  So what this is, is a new animal for me, and it is definitely stretching my envelope.  I regard that as a good thing.  As busy as it is on the factory floor, I am not working overtime, and none is expected.  There are test techs working around the clock, and if something goes wrong then the team that I'm on takes care of it when we come in the following morning.  And I've already written up two evaluations on the electronic subsystems we are testing, which gives me that sense of accomplishment that I want to take home with me.  It's so far a lot of fun, and I see myself riding this train for some time.

With that, we now get into the other subject I want to talk about.

During my 2 1/2 week hiatus, I decided to do some digging on my ancestry.  Now it's been known since I was in high school that I am descended from some colonials.  Most of my ancestors came over in the 1840s from their home country of Germany, some came over from Ireland around the same time, but my paternal grandmother had some Scotch-Irish ancestry and one of my uncles did some digging into this.  He found that we were descended from a William Riley Parker, who was born in Surry County North Carolina, and moved to Indiana and later on Doniphan County, Kansas.  Later in life he became interested in politics, and was elected to the lower house of the Kansas Legislature where he served one term, failing to win reelection.  

We know that his father was John Parker, who had a good chunk of land in Surry County, and in my digging I found that his brothers farmed across the state line in Virginia.  William Riley Parker's father-in-law was Edmond (Edmund?) Hodges.  There appears to be evidence that John Parker and Edmund Hodges served in the Revolutionary War, but I can't prove it.  There was also a John Parker in Surry County who was a moonshiner, but we don't know if there was a second John Parker there at the samet time and the same county.  Census records so far indicate only one.  So I'm going to claim descent from a moonshiner and proudly so.  OK?

Well my recent research went in another direction.  My grandmother also descended from a Levi Pilkington, and she was a granddaughter of Letitia Pilkington Penny.  Family legend has it that Levi Pilkington was run out of the Quakers for swearing and engaging in military activities, and yes I'm going to take some pride in that one.  I decided to see what I could learn about Levi Pilkington.  And here is where it gets interesting.

Levi's grandfather was also named Levi Pilkington, and one website has him as a Revolutionary War veteran.  He was born in southeastern Pennsylvania.  I took the Pilkington line back to 1687, and then took his mother's line back some.  This continued on to John Dudley, the 1st Duke of Northumberland, who was a trusted advisor of no less than Henry VIII!  John Dudley, who was also the 1st Earl of Warwick, has a Wikipedia article, as that he was executed for high treason at the Tower of London for trying to get his daughter-in-law, Lady Jane Grey, on to the throne.

The line goes back even farther, as that I have learned that I share a common ancestor with George Washington.  And that's the good news.  The bad news is that King Charles III is also descended from this same ancestor.

Another trace that I need to work on (verify) is one that goes all the way back to Charlemagne.  There is also evidence of Spanish and French royalty, and who knows where it will go from there when I pick this up again.

Meantime, this has inspired me to learn about British history.  How do Dukes become Dukes?  How does an Earl become an Earl?  I've learned that the reigning monarch made those decisions back then, as a means of recognizing and rewarding talent that they valued in those times.

I am now reading a book on Henry VIII, and already John Dudley is being mentioned on page 7.  I may have to search Amazon to see if anyone has written a book about him.  I get the sense that my ancestor is not well liked as a historical figure, in spite of some significant military accomplishments that he led.  

All of that said.........I've got a lot of work to do, not only at work, but also in family history.

Jerry Lewis, Statues, Et. Al.

Jerry Lewis passed away in Las Vegas yesterday.  Although I would not consider myself a fan of his, that guy made me laugh a lot when I was a kid.  It was a real treat to be up late one Friday night during the summer, and learn that a Jerry Lewis movie was on that night.

DC Comics also had a Jerry Lewis series, and those were my favorites.  His dealings with life, his rebellious nephew Renfrew, getting a job at the circus where he was mistaken for a liontamer named Terry Lewis......I am not a comic book collector, but I would love to get my hands on the entire series.

We have lost a legend.

* * * * * * *

Tearing down Confederate statues seems to be the big rage these days.  This isn't a burning issue as far as most of the public goes.  Tearing them down will in no way erase the results of slavery or the Civil War itself, yet the malcontents want this done.

I personally have no issue with the statues myself.  I view it as part of our nation's history.  The way I see it, if we have statues in the North to honor those generals who fought for the Union, why can't we have statues in the South that honor those who fought for the Confederacy?

The reality is that both sides of this war had brave men and great generals.  I personally think it's regrettable that a bloody war such as this came about to settle the issues of slavery, secession, nullification, and state's rights.

In the Manassas Battlefield, there is a statue of General Stonewall Jackson, placed where he earned his nickname......"there's Jackson, standing like a stone wall!"  I attended Stonewall Jackson Senior High School when I lived there.  I cringe at the thought that a bunch of malcontents who have never been to Manassas would demand that the high school be named for someone else.

Reality is, is that when the war was over, Abraham Lincoln wanted reconciliation with the South, and not retribution.  When Lee surrendered, General Grant ordered his band to play "Dixie" for the defeated Confederates.

Tearing down statues, in my opinion, runs counter to what Abraham Lincoln would have wanted.

* * * * * * *

As I have stated earlier, I have been active again in amateur radio, and I really love it when I get to sit down in front of the rig and try to make contact with somebody.  I put up another antenna, this one for the 20 meter band.  I was able to make contact with two stations each in Indiana, Illinois, and Hawaii.  Yesterday I talked to a station in northern California and another one in Pennsylvania.

Conditions weren't really the greatest.  In fact, I can't remember when they have been worse.  Today they are better, but I am away from home this evening to enjoy them, so all I can do is look at the propagation reports and hope that whoever is out there is having a lot of fun.

* * * * * * *

Don't forget to pet a dog or a cat!

The Man Who Counterfeited Nickels

Francis Leroy Henning is a name that is not found in history books.  His portrait will not be found in any art museum or on any postage stamp.  As far as I've been able to determine he has not walked the Earth's surface for the last several years, and yet in his own strange way, Francis Leroy Henning managed to do something that no one before him had ever done before and no one will ever do since.  Francis Leroy Henning is The Man Who Counterfeited Nickels.

He was not the only man who counterfeited coins, but he was the only man we are aware of who counterfeited your average run-of-the-mill five cent piece commonly found in circulation, who mass produced over 400,000 of them from the basement of his home in Erial N.J., near Philadelphia.  His nickels are still being found in circulation today, and are much sought after by coin collectors.

I first heard of The Man Who Counterfeited Nickels when I was twelve years of age, in a book about the U.S. Secret Service that I had checked out of the school library.  His criminal enterprise was one of the strangest stories of this type of criminal activity that I had ever heard of, and still ranks as such today.  Although a nickel had considerable more purchasing power in 1954 when he counterfeited as it does today, the Secret Service, per my recollection, was having trouble understanding why he was counterfeiting common coinage.

The story in that book has it that Mr. Henning had been mass producing these fake nickels out of an alloy that is similar as to what the real nickels use today.  He was somehow getting large numbers of these into circulation and that his efforts were undetected until a paperboy in Philadelphia got one of these in his change when he was collecting payment for the newspapers on his route.  He was jingling the coins in his pocket, and noticed that one of them wasn't sounding right.  He got his change out to look at it, and immediately spotted the fake nickel:  a nickel dated 1944, but missing the mintmark on the reverse.

I'll have to digress a little bit and explain about mintmarks.

In those days, coins minted in Philadelphia did not have mintmarks on them until 1942, and that was only on the nickel.  The alloy was switched to a wartime alloy and in order to distinguish these nickels from the regular copper/nickel alloy, the mintmarks on the reverse of nickels were enlarged and placed conspicuously above the Monticello.  The Philadelphia mint, for the first time, used the "P" mintmark.  This practice continued for all nickels dated 1943, 1944, and 1945.  In 1946 the regular alloy was resumed and the mintmarks went back to where they were for the pre-war years, and Philadelphia dropped the "P" entirely ("P" marked coins returned in 1979 for Susan B Anthony dollars, and have been used on all coins, save for cents, beginning in 1980). 

Anyway, to get back to the story, the paperboy knew that he had a fake nickel, not only by the way that it sounded, but also because it was missing a mintmark that should have appeared on any nickel dated 1944.  The paperboy showed the nickel to his father, who in turn contacted the Secret Service, and the Secret Service began investigating.  Significant quantities of fake nickels, some with dates other than 1944 were being reported, at which point newspaper reports of large quantities of fake nickels circulating in the Philadelphia area were appearing.  Francis Henning read about himself, realizing that he was attracting much more attention than he wanted, and he decided that it was time to get rid of the evidence.

Up until then, he had been depositing his nickels into banks, using the story that he owned a vending machine route.  His nickels were of decent enough quality to not draw attention, but weren't cost effective.  One story is that he figured out how much this was costing him, and that he learned that they were costing him six cents each to make.  Another story is that he abandoned counterfeiting nickels since he figured he would make five dollar bills instead, and yet another story is that he had been caught faking the fives, and switched to nickels when he got out of prison. 

The one story that is consistent here is that he dumped 200,000 of his nickels into the Schuylkill River, and another 200,000 in Copper Creek.  This suggests that he had to get rid of the evidence before fleeing the area.

Somehow, the Secret Service caught up to him, and when looking at various links this evening, one source said that he had fled to Cleveland before being arrested.  Arrested he was, and Francis Leroy Henning found himself in the slammer, in federal lockup for one of the more strangest counterfeiting schemes in human history.

As previously stated, Henning nickels are still found in circulation.  There were so many of them placed out there that some coin books, when you look up the value of the 1944 nickel, will have an asterisk next to that date, and the footnote will read that "1944 nickels without mintmarks are counterfeit".  Henning used other dates, such as 1939 and 1953, and authenticating fake nickels (as silly as that sounds) is a subject that frequently comes up on the coin collecting discussion boards.

It is a strange irony that these nickels, fake as they are, are still sought after to this day, and auction prices for these have been known to run as high as $80. 

I have to admit, that I wouldn't mind owning a few of these nickels myself.

Yes......a coin collector, wanting to own a few fake nickels. 

Go figure.

I Got My Kicks on Route 66!

Three days ago I left my parents' house in San Jose to start the drive home.  Yep, I spent Thankgsiving Week up there with them, but chose not to advertise here that I was away from home.....even though I have a housesitter and two sets of neighbors who will shoot first and call 911 later.  It was a good visit, getting to spend time with my folks, family, and some close friends that I've known for several years.

On Tuesday, I decided to start the drive back.  I knew before this trip that I was going to budget three days of drive so that I could accommodate a stretch of the old US Route 66.  I've been fascinated with highway history for some time, and of course the Mother Road was part of that fascination.  I had paralleled it before on previous trips via I-40 and I-15.  This time I wanted to be on the Main Street of America.

I arrived in Victorville Tuesday evening.  I drove up and down 7th Street that evening, which was once signed as US 66.  After dinner and a night of rest I set out the next morning, determined to take as much of 66 from there to Needles.

Victorville is home to a Route 66 museum, but they were closed on Wednesday.  (I had to leave San Jose on Tuesday morning as that California's San Joaquin Valley had a wind advisory forecast the following day).  From the outside the museum did not look all that large but I'm sure that it would have made for an interesting stop.  I took some photos of 7th Street before leaving on National Trails Highway, which is what the former US 66 is now called in California.

It was pretty much a smooth ride all the way up to Barstow.  South of Helendale, I encountered my first abandoned gas station, and across the street from there someone filled their large front yard with sculptures that had bottles intermixed with metal frames.  Route 66 was known for interesting roadside attractions, and this was one of them.  Further up the road past Helendale, I encountered an abandoned structure on a remote stretch.  What was it?  It may have been a roadside store or maybe someone's house.  I don't know, but I took several photographs of it before moving on to Barstow.

Near Barstow, to the east, Route 66 is interrupted by a Marine base, and you have no choice but to get on I-40 for a few miles.  I encountered an exit near that base after I was past it, and so I rejoined the old highway for the next several miles.  On the north side was another abandoned gas station.....a large one at that.....an old truck stop?  There were several bays where at one time gasoline was dispensed, and two large parking lots.  This was not behind a chain link fence so I was able to wander around there for a bit before resuming my journey.

The road continued on past that, and right next to I-40 where there was an exit there was another abandoned gas station.  The sign indicated regular for $3.19 per gallon so this one was a more recent closure.  The brand of gasoline was Spirit, and most of the property itself was behind a chain link fence.  I'd guess that this one was in commission before I-40 was built, and managed to hang on several years afterward before joining the ranks of those structures that will be regarded as relics twenty years from now.

After that stop, I continued on.  The sun was out, the skies blue with only intermittent interruptions from the clouds, the temperature about 70 degrees, and I had Bachman & Turner playing in the truck.  I was really enjoying it!  That is, for only the next ten miles or so!  At that point, Route 66 was a frontage road to I-40, paralleling it, and in very rough condition.  I had to slow down to 25 mph at that point and it was still a rough ride.  I finally took to driving on the shoulder which was smoother than driving on the road surface.  A few might argue that 66 was still driveable at that point but I wasn't enjoying it.  I rejoined I-40 at Hector Road and continued on I-40 until Ludlow.

From Hector Road to Ludlow, Route 66 appeared to be a frontage road in a state of disrepair.  In one way I was wondering why no one was taking care of it, but in another way I knew why.  No one uses a frontage road when there's an interstate where you can go 70, especially in that remote part of San Bernardino County.  The old 66 was to the south of I-40 and then to the north of I-40.  At the Ludlow exit, it crosses I-40 again, and at that point it veers off to the south, being separated from the interstate by several miles.

After gassing up in Ludlow, I resumed using the Mother Road.  I encountered some interesting ruins at Bagdad. There was what used to be a restaurant (the sign is still there) and a motel.  I was able to wander inside a few of the rooms and I took several photos there.  I was envisioning where the bed used to be and what it must have been like to have stayed there.  There was some trash along the floor which I did not pick thru, and an old chair lying in ruin in one of the rooms.  The ghosts of the past that were there were not talking to me, as that they were instead presenting a visual record that only filled in some of the blanks and beckoning my imagination to fill in the rest.  What kind of conversations took place there?  How many now-valuable silver coins were carried into there and then out?  Did somebody famous stay in there before they became famous?  These were some of the things I was wondering about.

From then on, the condition of the road was much better.  It wasn't quite up to snuff as I would have liked, but I also could comfortably drive 55 or 60 and not worry about engine parts falling out of my truck.  I saw some more abandoned structures, the Amboy Crater, lava fields, and occasionally I would encounter a few other Route 66 buffs.  At Amboy, I entered another open abandoned motel room and again wondered what kind of stories that room would have told me if only it could have talked.  After that was Chambless, Essex, more abandoned structures, and yes, I took several more photographs.

At Goffs Road the older pre-1931 alignment continues, but the post-1931 alignment of the route takes you to I-40.  From what little research I've done, I-40 overlaid Route 66, and does so until you're a few miles outside of Needles.  From there you can exit the interstate and drive down the historic 66, which is Main Street, and yes, I drove most of that stretch.  I stayed on that, taking US95 south, which is concurrent to the old 66 until you're about five miles south of Needles.  US95 was under construction at that point and had I known that I might have jumped on I-40 and taken that to Kingman.  Oh well.

As for the drive itself......as for what I saw......I had a blast!  Sure, it added one day to the return trip home, but it was worth it.  To be honest, I want to repeat that drive again someday.  All along that way I kept thinking about how what I was driving on used to be one of the more important federal highways that millions of people once traveled on.  In its prime, people chased dreams, caught their dreams, lost their dreams and died, and who knows what else.  I'm convinced that this road spawned the motel industry as some enterprising folks early on set up roadside rooms where the weary traveler could zonk out for the night before resuming his quest for whatever it is that he was thirsting for the next day.

I'm sure that many of you have heard that famous song about getting your kicks on Route 66.

Well, you can still get them, as I found out just two days ago.

My only regret is that I can not go back in time and see Route 66 in its prime.