This was sent to me by a friend of mine in Phoenix metro, Carl P, who's been backstage with me to meet Randy Bachman and Fred Turner. We also got to visit with Carl when we were up in Glendale earlier this month.....he's a great guy, and more knowledgeable about the music business than I am.
Some backstory: Bachman-Turner Overdrive are set to be inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in Winnipeg on the 30th. Seems to me that this is 20 years overdue.
If you're a BTO fan, you may have already seen this, but if you're not......enjoy!
Randy Bachman Interview
Monday, March 24, 2014
Saturday, March 22, 2014
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.
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.
Thursday, March 20, 2014
The First Day of Spring, 2014
I haven't posted in quite a while as to what's going on here on the personal front. So what I'm going to do here is catch up on some things. It's been an exhausting day today as part of an exhausting week, but tomorrow is my off Friday and this evening I don't have anything on the calendar.
Yes, I am still seeing Sheila. We're seeing quite a bit of each other. Things are going very well in that regard.
I'm hoping that later on this year we can see more of US 66, the Arizona portion between Kingman and Flagstaff, and during the spring. It's challenging for both of us to get any extended time off. I switched assignments at work effective January 2nd and we're on a very tight schedule.
Two weekends ago Bachman & Turner played in Glendale, at the Jobing.com Arena, the present home of the Phoenix Coyotes. Sheila and I got to meet up with Fred Turner a few hours before the show. I knew before last Christmas that we might be seeing them. Fred told me in an email about there being rumors of an Arizona show, and when it became official I bought some tickets.
We ran into Fred and his wife Donna in that mall area north of the arena. I had related to Sheila the story about how I had run into Fred on Fremont Street in Las Vegas several hours before their scheduled show, and within ten minutes it was happening all over again!
I have been wanting Sheila to meet Fred for some time, and it happened! Sheila was impressed with how down to earth Fred is, and me, even though I've now met him more times than I can remember, I still get giddy with excitement whenever it happens.
As for the show, they were preceded on stage by Trooper and Loverboy; both out of Canada. It was "Canada Fest" and from audience response to questions by the lead singer of Trooper, 40% of the audience was Canadian. He also gave a friendly shout out to us Americans.
Bachman & Turner ended up closing the festival. It was a shorter set than I would have liked, but they were more improvisational than I had ever seen. Randy Bachman extended most of his solos with extra measures......even his "drumstick" solo was a little longer and not quite to script, for lack of a better expression.
There weren't any songs from their 2010 CD, but they did play "Shakin' All Over"......I don't think they've done that one live since 1986. They did not indicate that any new material was coming out, but I can tell you what I know here.
A 40th anniversary of their Not Fragile album is being released later this month. It will be a two CD set and will have some live/rehearsal material. It is also public knowledge that Fred would very much love to do a new album, but logistically it's difficult since he's in Winnipeg (and Tampa during the winter) while the rest are in B.C.. Randy's also got a lot of side projects going on with a radio show on CBC as well his "Every Song Tells a Story"concert series that he does without Fred.
As for the new album, there's some chatter that Randy would love to do a new one, concentrating on blues, and Fred could contribute beyond measure to something like that.....not only as a vocalist (he's got the right vocals for it) but also in songwriting.
I can only hope, as a nearly 40 year fan, that they are taking good care of themselves, and that the Good Lord will bless them with many more years. It's hard to believe that both of them are now 70 and are still rocking. It's likely that 40 years ago neither one of them thought they'd be playing together in 2014.
I got my first 2014 coin in my change this morning, a Lincoln cent. Tucson usually doesn't get the new coins as quickly as other locations. Mine came in change from a purchase at the Quik Trip on Broadway and Camino Seco. Just a few days ago they were handing out shiny 2013 cents.
The guy behind the counter told me that they've been getting brand new rolls from their armored car carrier (Brinks?) so it sounds as if the 2013 supply is near its end.
This may be an early bedtime tonight for me, so I'll sign now.
Weekends are great. Especially the long ones.
* * * * * * *
Yes, I am still seeing Sheila. We're seeing quite a bit of each other. Things are going very well in that regard.
I'm hoping that later on this year we can see more of US 66, the Arizona portion between Kingman and Flagstaff, and during the spring. It's challenging for both of us to get any extended time off. I switched assignments at work effective January 2nd and we're on a very tight schedule.
* * * * * * *
Two weekends ago Bachman & Turner played in Glendale, at the Jobing.com Arena, the present home of the Phoenix Coyotes. Sheila and I got to meet up with Fred Turner a few hours before the show. I knew before last Christmas that we might be seeing them. Fred told me in an email about there being rumors of an Arizona show, and when it became official I bought some tickets.
We ran into Fred and his wife Donna in that mall area north of the arena. I had related to Sheila the story about how I had run into Fred on Fremont Street in Las Vegas several hours before their scheduled show, and within ten minutes it was happening all over again!
I have been wanting Sheila to meet Fred for some time, and it happened! Sheila was impressed with how down to earth Fred is, and me, even though I've now met him more times than I can remember, I still get giddy with excitement whenever it happens.
As for the show, they were preceded on stage by Trooper and Loverboy; both out of Canada. It was "Canada Fest" and from audience response to questions by the lead singer of Trooper, 40% of the audience was Canadian. He also gave a friendly shout out to us Americans.
Bachman & Turner ended up closing the festival. It was a shorter set than I would have liked, but they were more improvisational than I had ever seen. Randy Bachman extended most of his solos with extra measures......even his "drumstick" solo was a little longer and not quite to script, for lack of a better expression.
There weren't any songs from their 2010 CD, but they did play "Shakin' All Over"......I don't think they've done that one live since 1986. They did not indicate that any new material was coming out, but I can tell you what I know here.
A 40th anniversary of their Not Fragile album is being released later this month. It will be a two CD set and will have some live/rehearsal material. It is also public knowledge that Fred would very much love to do a new album, but logistically it's difficult since he's in Winnipeg (and Tampa during the winter) while the rest are in B.C.. Randy's also got a lot of side projects going on with a radio show on CBC as well his "Every Song Tells a Story"concert series that he does without Fred.
As for the new album, there's some chatter that Randy would love to do a new one, concentrating on blues, and Fred could contribute beyond measure to something like that.....not only as a vocalist (he's got the right vocals for it) but also in songwriting.
I can only hope, as a nearly 40 year fan, that they are taking good care of themselves, and that the Good Lord will bless them with many more years. It's hard to believe that both of them are now 70 and are still rocking. It's likely that 40 years ago neither one of them thought they'd be playing together in 2014.
* * * * * * *
I got my first 2014 coin in my change this morning, a Lincoln cent. Tucson usually doesn't get the new coins as quickly as other locations. Mine came in change from a purchase at the Quik Trip on Broadway and Camino Seco. Just a few days ago they were handing out shiny 2013 cents.
The guy behind the counter told me that they've been getting brand new rolls from their armored car carrier (Brinks?) so it sounds as if the 2013 supply is near its end.
* * * * * *
This may be an early bedtime tonight for me, so I'll sign now.
Weekends are great. Especially the long ones.
Monday, March 17, 2014
A Warning About Earthlink
The below is from an email that I sent out on 2/7/14, detailing my problems with Earthlink.
I would not wish this experience on anyone.
I would not wish this experience on anyone.
* * * * * * *
For the past two days I have experienced a severe outage of the internet thanks to Earthlink. Right now my service is very spotty, and repeated calls to their so-called customer support have failed to resolve the problem. Since as I write this I am temporarily on line, I would like to take this opportunity to warn everyone on my contact list about this company, as that I may not have this opportunity until Wednesday of next week when my new ISP has been commissioned.
What has happened is that my connection went down again for 48 hours, for the third time in the last six months. When I have called tech support, after a 30 minute wait I am talking to someone in India, and 75% of the time I can't understand the person I'm talking to and that person can't understand me. If on those occasions when some semblance of communication does become possible, that tech support agent will insist that I go behind my computer, disconnect wires and report to him what I observe, then re-connect those wires, report again....in other words, their first line of defense, when they decide to drop the connection, is to insist that the problem is at your end and that you must ensure that your connections are good. They absolutely positively refuse to consider the possibility that the outage is at their end until you go through these monkey motions of disconnecting cables to risk introducing a failure at your end so that they can blame you for it and refuse to take responsibility for the problem. Please hold this thought, we'll come to back to it.
Once you're past that, then the tech support agent *MIGHT* offer to check the problem at his end. You'll be put on hold, and then they'll acknowledge that there is a problem, and that it will be fixed in 24 hours.
When you try again in 24 hours, guess what, you're still not on the net. This means that you have to call again, rinse and repeat, and then you have to go thru more monkey motions with opening and closing browsers, typing in special addresses to verify that yes indeed, you're not connected. What this means is that you have to wait another 24 hours. This is usual operating procedure, however, with this week's issues that I'm having with them, they actually got innovative and figured out a new way to irritate their customers.
With this week's issues, they admitted the problem was at their end. Two nights ago, their story was that this was affecting several regions in the southwest, and that this would be fixed within one hour. One hour later, the story was changed again, and that this would be fixed within 24 hours.
Last night it took four attempts, yes four, to get hold of someone. The first three, after a 30 minute wait, the phone rang to a tech support agent, and I was immediately disconnected. That meant having to call again, and to go back to my place at the end of the line. Persistence in some cases does pay off, though I had to waste two hours of my life so that I could talk to someone that I could not understand.
When I got thru, the story changed again, and that "all of Earthlink" was affected. Curiously enough, when I accessed their webpage at work this morning, they listed some select area codes that were affected by their server outage, but mine (520) wasn't one of them. Their webpage said that all issues had been resolved and they were up and running again.
When I got home, guess what, still no service. So I had to call again. Things had improved somewhat as that instead of being immediately disconnected three times, they only disconnected me two times. When I got hold of someone, he insisted that they had fixed the problem. I then wanted to know why my fourth modem light wasn't turning on. They put me on hold, asked me to try connecting again, and this time I was able to connect. I'm guessing that when they fixed the server (that is, if that was what was really wrong in the first place) they had to be reminded to turn it on, or something like that.
Earlier this evening, Earthlink went down again. When I tried calling the tech support number, they changed the canned message to admit that there was a widespread outage, and that due to high call volume, they could not take the call.
Anticipating the need to change ISPs, I had a conversation with CenturyLInk, and I have made the decision (after talking to some co-workers) to go over to them. The switchover may not be complete until Wednesday of next week, but the way things are going right now, it will be a quicker fix than what Earthlink is willing to do. Until then, I will *NOT* be quick in answering emails. I will only be able to answer them when I'm able to take my laptop to a Starbucks or somewhere similar.
Now let's get back to that thought about their tech support wanting you to play computer engineer.
I went to the Consumer Affairs (I hope I got this name right) website to read Earthlink reviews. I learned that Earthlink has a 92% highly unfavorable rating from this website. There were also 237 horror stories posted about their tech support.
Many of them said the same thing that I told you, but there were also instances of where one tech support agent asked a customer to go climb onto his roof to verify the connection to his satellite dish! There were several other bizarre stories of a similar nature, but what was really disturbing was a common theme when people terminated their service: Earthlink continued to bill their credit cards and/or took money out of checking accounts, for six months after being notified by these customers that they were cancelling their service!
So....not only am I going to have to terminate Earthlink, I'm going to have to call one of my banks to get an existing credit card that I have cancelled, and to get a new one assigned.....good thing I have more than one Visa card! I have to do this as a preventive measure in order to keep Earthlink from stealing money that they are not entitled to. (McAfee will do the same thing; though in my case when they tried to do that they found that I had cancelled that credit card because I switched over to another card).
What we have here is a company that was once reputable, that has been run into the ground by a management that is either incompetent, dishonest, unmotivated......I don't know which word to use here.
What I do know is that there are too many people in that company who are getting their paychecks irrespective of whether or not they do their jobs in the first place.
Me, I'm done with them. Period.
As for my purpose in sending you this......I'm not calling for a boycott or anything like that. I'm not going to ask you to forward this.
What I am going to ask you is that if you are considering using Earhtlink as an ISP, is to rethink your consideration of them. You don't have to take my word for this. Just google "Earthlink reviews" and decide for yourself what you need to do, if anything.
best regards,
Dave
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