“Hop” The Counterfeit Five Dollar Bills

An ill advised plan to help bring more money into the household goes terribly wrong.

Hop”

The Counterfeit Five Dollar Bills

As I have mentioned money was always tight in our household.

Tight, heck it was practically non-existent.

Somehow though we always survived.

This was in large part because of my father’s ingenuity.

As a man of the streets he was always able to find a way to hustle up some extra cash when it was really needed.

This is a lost art today.

I guess you can say that he and many of his friends invented the “side hustle” before it was in vogue.

Sometimes my father earned extra money by playing pool, or finding temporary work late at night when he would normally be sleeping, or at other times he partnered with friends on little financial schemes to raise a quick buck.

He was not the only one in the neighborhood who looked for other ways to earn cash or save money. It was very common.

Very often these plans were boarder line illegal or even downright against the law.

For example, in order to keep the lights on several families “tinkered” with the power meters.

This was of course illegal, but often it was the only way to keep the bills low and the heat on in the winter.

Was it illegal Yes.

Was it immoral? No.

People reasoned that since the power company was so large it would not really be hurting them by stealing a little power to keep the lights on and the heat going.

This was a common belief in the neighborhood.

The mantra was that you never cheated a friend, but big companies were fair game since they made so much money off people.

Often people were desperate to pay the bills and so they did desperate things.

In the end, they did what they had to do in order to survive and people rationalized and justified their actions, even the illegal ones, in order to do so.

It was out of this need for extra cash to keep the family afloat that my father came upon a plan to pass counterfeit money.

A local man had purchased $5 bills in large stacks of fifty bills per stack for $10 a stack.

With the face value being $250 it seemed like a good deal.

He in turn was selling them for $20 a stack or 50 cents each.

Since my father did not have $20 he bought ten bills for $5.

At times crazy ideas seem to make sense when you are trying to just survive.

Obeying the law seems less important when you have mouths to feed.

My father tucked the bills in his shirt and headed home.

He was not quite sure how he would pass them on.

He did not want to cheat anyone who was in as bad financial shape as he was himself.

Neighbors don’t cheat each other. If they do they and their families are socially ostracized.

When my father arrived home he sat down to eat before he headed off to his second job.

At nights he pumped gas at a local station.

It didn’t pay much, but every penny counted.

As he ate my mother asked him; “Hop do you have a few extra dollars? I want to go to the grocery store to pick up some things.”

My father knew she would be going to the new grocery store that had recently opened in the neighborhood.

This was a large chain store, so he figured that no one would be hurt.

He reached into his pocket and handed my mother two $5 bills.

She tucked them into her pocketbook and walked out the door.

The night was fairly busy at the gas station and my father was in and out of the office.

His shift was almost over when the phone call came in.

It was from the local police department.

They said that they had been trying for hours to reach him at home and at work.

There were no answering machines in those days so they just kept trying until they finally reached him.

They told him that my mother was in jail for trying to pass counterfeit money.

She had been sitting there in a cell for several hours.

The first thought that came into my father’s head after he was told that she was fine was that he was a dead man. She was going to kill him.

The police told him to come bail her out.

He asked how much it would be.

Since he did not have the bail money he called his boss and asked for an advance on his salary.

The boss told him to take whatever he needed out of the cash register.

He knew my father was a good worker who had been at the gas station for years and would certainly pay him back out of his future earnings.

My father finished the shift, locked up, and headed down to the police station.

When he got to the police station the officer on duty explained to him that there had been a rash of phony bills being passed in the neighborhood and my mother was caught when she tried to use some at the grocery store.

It looked like everyone in the neighborhood thought it was a good idea to buy those fake bills and several other people were also caught trying to make purchases.

The grocery store had immediately recognized that the bills were not real.

Unfortunately, these counterfeit bills were quite poorly made.

The eyes on Abe Lincoln were not quite right. They were blurry and a little crooked.

The officer said after speaking with my mother they were convinced she was unaware that they were counterfeit when she used them.

They were not filing any criminal charges, but that she would have to go to court and probably pay a fine.

Although my father was relieved to hear this he knew his punishment would be far worse than hers.

My mother was released and they headed home.

Once there my mother spent the better part of what was left of the evening reading my father the riot act.

“You knew they were phony, don’t lie to me, and still you gave them to me!

I could be in jail and then what would happen to all of us?!

Even worse if I had told them you gave them to me you would be in jail! I had to lie to protect you!

How would we pay the bills then if you were in jail?!

We would all be out on the streets!

We would starve to death!

Sometimes you just don’t think Hop!”

On and on she went.

My father sat quietly.

It was only because my father had to go to his day job in a few hours that she allowed him to get any sleep at all.

In the morning things were back to almost normal again.

My mother had calmed down.

My father sat at the table and my mother served him breakfast.

She was very quiet though. Not a good sign for my father.

“I am sorry Ange. I was just trying to get a little extra cash to help out.”

“I know” said my mother. “I understand. But, you also know this is not over.”

With that she smiled and cleared away the dirty dishes from the table.

My father tried to weakly smile back, but he knew his day of reckoning was still ahead.

He was correct.

My mother did get her revenge, but that’s a story for another day.