The Rural Voice, 1978-04, Page 38The certain did happen but it took so long coming that Peter
was beginning to relax, thinking that perhaps the boys really had
thought the bills were playmoney. But more than a week later
the rumour blew through the town that a counterfeit bill had
turned up at the bank. The bank tried to hush the whole thing up
because it wasn't them that discovered it but one of the
customers who noticed the bill was different when the teller tried
to give it to him in payment for a cheque. The bill was such an
obvious forgery with its strange colour and stiff paper that the
people at the bank were embarrassed at having accepted it from
someone else. They didn't know that it was Michael Townshend.
the manager's son who had passed the bill when he deposited it
in his account, after all. who mistrusted the boss' son?
Two days later a second counterfeit twenty dollar bill turned
up under similar circumstances at a sporting goods store when
the owner tried to make change for a salesman. Who would have
suspected the police chief's son would buy.a new basketball with
a phoney bill?
One by one the bills turned up over the next few weeks,
whenever the boys ran low on spending money or wanted a new
toy of some sort. Climax of the whole affair was when Kelly
McGintee, the town's stolid upholder of the law, tried to cash a
twenty at Margaret's restaurant during the morning and said she
had better check it. When she checked it she recognized it for
what it was. The laughter echoed around Kelly for days. How
could he explain that his son had slipped it into his billfold in
exchange for two tens? He didn't even know.
Michael and Brian didn't really feel guilty about their
"crime". In fact, they weren't even sure it was wrong. Neither of
them had even hid much to do with twenty -dollar bills before so
they weren't even sure they were fakes. As far as they knew they
were real money and the only qualms they had were about
having tricked Peggy into giving the bills to them.
Having always been given small and strictly supervised
allowances by their frugal parents, the boys found their new
wealth enchanting. They took care not to spend it carelessly and
that is why the bills turned up infrequently with no apparent
pattern.
This was the one mystery of the town, who was passing the
bills and how come they only turned up now and again. The other
was how people could be duped into accepting such obvious
forgeries. Everytime a bill appeared it was after someone else
had accepted them.
The mystery lasted nearly all summer. It was late in August
when the secret finally came out. The bank manager was walking
through his domain when one of the tellers laughingly
commented that he must be getting very generous toward his
son because Michael had just deposited twenty dollars and
raised his account by an extreme amount. The manager knew he
hadn't given the boy money so he went over to look at the record.
On it he saw the first twenty dollar deposit and when he asked to
see the money his son had put in he knew the horrid truth. There
was another counterfeit.
That night under rigorous cross examination Michael spilled
the beans to his father. This led to further investigation which
uncovered Peter and Peggy's part in the episode. Because of the
obvious embarrassment to such prominent towns people, the
bank manager, the chief of police and the town's printer and
newspaper publisher, the story was hushed up as quietly as
possible. Peter had already destroyed the plates so there was no
worry about them. The last of the bills were rounded up and
destroyed and the fathers pitched in to pay back the money that
was missing because of the incident.
Of course the news soon did get to the townspeople finally
because the secret could not be kept. It made great conversation
for almost a week and then, mercifully, was forgotten except by
the old-timers who gathered every morning on the benches
under the old maple by the post office. They stored it with the
story of Will Stimers' fools -gold discovery and the story of the
chase of the counterfeiters and retold it to anyone who would
listen for years to come. ❑
PG. 38. THE RURAL VOICE/APRIL 1978.
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