Fancy Pants

written by Paul Warnock

All characters & events are fictional, and any resemblance

to anyone living or deceased is coincidental and unintended.

​

This story takes place in Rockingham in the early to mid
1950’s.  The main characters are Frank, Chuck, Steve,
Harry, Henry, and Nathan, all members of the Sand Hill
Army Club.  There are also two canine honorary members:  
Old Red, a Chow-mix belonging to Steve, and Iky, a Spitz-
mix belonging to Nathan.  For more details on these boys,
please review my previous short stories “Hamlet or Bust,”
“The Clay Cipher,” and “The Headless Brakeman.”


The club formally meets every other Saturday, but many of
the boys hang out some at Frank’s house and Chuck’s
house.  Frank, Chuck, and Steve live on Sand Hill Road
(now called South Caroline Street).  Nathan lives over near
the old high school, which is a fair distance; so, he doesn’t
show up as often.  Harry & Henry live on the north side of
the railroad tracks on or near West Franklin Street (near
where the new Post Office is located today).  They all attend
LJ Bell Elementary School in town.  This was late spring,
and the upcoming summer vacation was embedded in the
boys’ thoughts.   


Just south of Frank’s house (up the hill) was a place called
“Spady’s Boarding House.”  Ms. Spady was a fifty-
something widow lady who owned a huge white house at
the corner of South Caroline Street and Midway Road.  She
normally had up to ten or so boarders.  On spring and
summer afternoons after work or on weekends, many of
the boarders sat around on the front porch in rocking
chairs or lounge chairs.  The boys liked to go up and talk
with them, especially when there was little else to do.  
Some of these men came to town to work on the new
highway 74 bypass (now called Broad Street).  Some came
from farms in adjacent counties to work in the
Rockingham area mills.  There was a fairly large turnover
with the boarders.  Few would stay more than several
months, as they would move their families to town or take
work somewhere else.  In others words, the boarders were
good working class people, and this was much cheaper
than staying in a hotel or motel.  Plus, Mrs. Spady was a
nice Christian lady who was like a “mother” to some of
them.  Also, Mrs. Spady was a good cook.       


Then one day a new border arrived.  It was a bit unusual
that this new man wore fairly nice expensive clothing and
drove a new dark blue DeSoto with an Indiana license
plate.  He kept to himself and never socialized with
anyone.  As far as anyone could tell, he was not working at
anyplace around Rockingham they were aware of.  The
boys wondered why would anyone with these kinds of
resources be staying at a boarding house?  Why wouldn’t
he be staying at a motel or even at The Rockingham Hotel
downtown if he were working on some sort of business
deal?  He was gone from Ms. Spady’s in about three or four
weeks.  Steve later said that he saw that same car going out
Midway Road on several occasions.  The boys started
calling this man “Fancy Pants.”


Frank often traveled with his father on his cracker route
that included about seven or eight North Carolina counties
centered on Rockingham.  His father usually stopped at
each little store along the way to take orders for Sunshine
crackers.  Frank was with his father in the Southern Pines
area when he noticed Fancy Pants and his new car, still
with the Indiana license plates.  He was also stopping at
just about every store.  Frank saw him buy a pack of
cigarettes at several of these stores with ten-dollar bills,
but he had never seen him smoke.  Now why would he do
that?  When Frank got back home, he started talking to the
other boys about that oddity.  The boys first thought that
Fancy Pants was buying cigarettes in North Carolina where
the cigarette tax was almost non-existent and shipping
them to some Northern State where the cigarette tax was
exorbitant.  They had heard one of their teachers mention
that there was a huge black market in cigarettes in the
Northern States.  But if that were the situation, why didn’t
he buy them by the carton?  That would be cheaper and
easier to transport, and he wouldn’t have to make as many
stops.


Steve suggested they walk over to the Midway area and see
if they could locate that DeSoto again.  So they did.  Now
Fancy Pants had never noticed the Sand Hill Club boys, but
the boys decided to be a little clandestine anyhow.  One
thing about Midway, it’s not too big, at most about sixty or
so houses back then.  You could travel the world over, but
you will never find any nicer people anywhere.  But the
boys were looking for a new dark blue DeSoto.  Most of
these people worked in the mills and didn’t have cars at all,
never mind a new DeSoto.  Most of the mill people relied
on the Suburban Bus Company to get themselves to and
from work.  The boys had noticed there were several
isolated houses with dirt roads leading from the main
road.  These must have been farmhouses.  They still didn’t
see any DeSotos.  But, as they were about to leave the area,
they saw it come down the road and turn into one of these
isolated farmhouses.  The boys tried to be as inconspicuous
as they could.  Fancy Pants was driving, that was for sure.  
They asked one of the Midway men sitting on his front
porch about that house.  He said it was the old Morgan
home place.  The elderly parents had died, and the children
had rented it to some northerners.  There were at least
twenty acres, but the current tenants were not planting
anything at the farm.   


This was enough to peak the interest of the boys.  They
found an old abandoned cinder-block house near that long
dirt driveway.  That old building looked like it was ready to
be torn down.  The windows were all broken, and the doors
wouldn’t shut.  The boys gathered in this old building to
collect their thoughts.  They kept a lookout on the driveway
that was about two hundred feet beyond where they were.  
They waited just about as long as they could when finally
four other nice new cars also turned into the driveway of
that house within an hour.  All were different brands of
cars including a Packard “Clipper,” a Studebaker “Hawk,”
a Hudson “Hornet,” and a Mercury “Monterey.”  The cars
were more or less new but not otherwise flashy.  The colors
were dark blue, dark green, or black.  These cars had
license plates from Florida, Virginia, New York, and
another from Indiana.  This farmhouse had a large wooded
area to the east of it.  The twenty acres of farmland lay to
the west of the house but it was lying fallow.  This would
have been the time for farmers to plant their crops.   


Because the boys knew the woods around the farmhouse
very well including all the paths and hiding places, they
decided to approach the house from the woods to see what
was going on. The woods belonged to Mr. McKnight who
had  “posted” signs displayed, but the boys didn’t pay much
heed to them.   This is now the area where the new highway
220 runs, but back then the woods ran from where the
VFW is today almost all the way to Midway stopping at this
farmhouse.       

The boys were afraid to get too close, but got as close to the
house as they could.  They knew as long as they stayed in
the woods, they were not trespassing on the farm.  Mr.
McKnight might fuss at them, but so what?  The boys
discovered there were five men and one woman at this
rented farmhouse.  She appeared to be the wife of one of
the men.  All of them wore nice clothing; they sure didn’t
look like farmers or mill workers.    The boys sort of camped
out there in the woods, but were careful not to be seen.  In
case you don’t remember, young boys that age have
extremely good eyesight.  Frank said his father often asked
him to ride shotgun to look for road signs since he could
see them long before his father could.  Frank said one of his
brothers used to call him “Hawkeye,” but the nickname
didn’t stick.  They memorized the license plates and about
everything else they could such as colors and any oddities
such as dents or license plate covers.  They did this for
several days taking shifts since everyone couldn’t be there
all the time.  The boys learned that five of them would leave
and be gone all day.  They seemed to always leave one of
the men behind as if he were guarding the house.  Then on
the fourth day, they all stayed home.  There was an old
tractor in the side yard.  They would come out, start it up,
and just let it idle until it ran out of gas.  Now why would
they do that?  Then the next day, they were all gone again
except for one man.  It was a different man every day as if
they were taking turns.


Well, the boys figured they were in this over their heads;
so, they decided to go visit their old friend, Chief McAllister
(Chief of Police in Rockingham).  So they did.  He wasn’t
too concerned at first, but the part about Frank seeing
Fancy Paints repeatedly buy Cigarettes with large bills did
get his attention.  He said he needed to talk with the Sheriff
since this house was outside the city limits.  The Chief
convinced the Sheriff that something funny was going on.  
The Sheriff decided they could get a court order to raid the
place based on what the boys had told the Chief.  Of course
the Chief told the boys not to go back over to that house,
but the boys did anyhow.  Four of the boys were there
hidden in the woods when the raiding party arrived:  
Frank, Chuck, Steve, and Harry plus Old-Red and Iky.   
There were two deputy cars, the Chief’s car, plus two
unmarked police cars.  There were at least ten lawmen
including several in plain clothes.  Today, you would refer
to this as a “SWAT” team (“Special Weapons Assault
Team”).  Anyhow, the lawmen surrounded the house and
rushed the front door.  The boys could have told them
Fancy Pants and his cohorts had left a couple hours ago in a
mighty big rush.  The boys were still trying to muster the
courage to go look into the house themselves, but didn’t
since they suspected the Sheriff was on his way, and the
Chief had told them not to go back to this place.  The
lawmen soon discovered they were assaulting an empty
house.  They didn’t even have to break the door down as
these crooks had left it open as they made their hasty
retreat.  After the excitement was over, the boys went up to
the Chief to tell them that these men and the lady had left
about two hours ago in a big hurry.  Inside the house they
found some empty inkbottles, spilled ink, grease marks,
plus small pieces of paper that looked like the type of paper
one would print money on.


The plain-clothes lawmen may have been Federal men.  
Anyhow, they questioned the boys over and over again,
getting the makes and colors of the cars including the
license plate numbers.  They took the boys downtown to
look through mug shots.  The boys were able to identify
three of the men.  The lawmen said Fancy Paints and his
friends must have seen the boys or one of the dogs.  
Otherwise, people like this would torch a place as they left
town since they didn’t want to leave any evidence around.   


The boys stayed at the police station talking with Chief
McAllister.  He said the man Frank saw in Southern Pines
was probably passing counterfeit ten-dollar bills.  That
would explain why he went from store to store.  He bought
cigarettes since they were so easy to buy, and a merchant
would never question their sale to an adult.  And for a
twenty-cent pack of cigarettes, he could pass a ten-dollar
bill.  They probably did sell those cigarettes to someone
headed up north to put on the black market.  Frank asked
why did Fancy Pants stay at the boarding house?  The Chief
reckoned it was mostly to avoid the police.  The police
patrol the hotels and motels, but not boarding houses.  
Fancy Pants was probably the lead runner looking for a
good location.  He would call the rest of his group to come
after he rented a secluded place.   


Some counterfeiters will just print a lot of fake money and
head out in a straight line to nowhere.  When crooks do
that, the Fed’s can trace their path as the fake money turns
up in banks.  They catch a lot of counterfeiters this way.  
Most banks could tell this was funny money, but most
merchants can’t.  Fancy Pants and his group would change
their base of operation at random and go in and out from
that location like the spokes on a wheel.  That is until they
relocated.  This makes it more difficult for the authorities
to catch them.  They never stayed operational in the same
place for much more than a week.  These guys need to look
as inconspicuous as possible.  Their clothes were just a
little more fancy than working class people; maybe they
wanted to look like tourists.  Their cars were plain
although they were new.  They didn’t want any car trouble,
and that’s one of the reasons for the new cars.   


Most counterfeiters print twenty-dollar bills.  Back then,
most merchants really looked closely at a twenty-dollar bill,
but not at a ten-dollar bill.  This was another way our
crooks tried to be unnoticeable.  No one thought much
about a ten-dollar bill.  A twenty-dollar bill back then was
much like a hundred-dollar bill today.  Have you tried
spending a hundred-dollar bill at a convenience store
lately?


Counterfeiters need to have several specialized people in
their group.  One person needs to be very good at
engraving, and may have worked for the US mint or could
have worked at an engraving shop.  Stock certificates
usually have a lot of engraving; so people could learn their
skills from this.  There aren’t that many people with these
kinds of skills so the authorities usually know about most
of them, especially ones recently released from prison.  
Then the group needs someone with printing experience.  
It’s not easy to print paper without leaving smudge marks.  
There is expensive equipment for this, but again the
authorities know about these machines, and who knows
how to operate them.  Also needed is a paper expert to help
make fibrous paper.  It’s usually easier to make than to
steal.  Usually this quality of paper might fool an
unsuspecting merchant, but not a well-trained banker.  
Then an overall organizer and administrator is needed to
concern himself with how to avoid the authorities and
when to lay low for a while.  This leader is usually an
experienced person who has languished in a prison
somewhere for ten years or more thinking about all the
ways things could go wrong.  He also will be in charge of
“aging” new funny money.  This is done with moisture and
stomping the money into the ground.  Then one or two
additional people are needed to inconspicuously pass the
counterfeit money.  The idea is that if one of the passers
gets caught, the remainder of the group will get out of town
as soon as that passer doesn’t return on time.  The group
can continue without one of their passers who can easily be
replaced when caught.  Even with all this, the authorities
have kept most counterfeiters in jail, making this a
diminishing crime.    


Today counterfeiters have moved to identity thief and
credit card thief.  But that’s a different story for another
time.       


Fancy Pants and his confederates were finally caught down
in Georgia based on the information given to the
authorities by the Sand Hill Club boys.  They never
received a reward or anything like that.  The Chief even
scolded the boys a little for going back to that house after
he had told them not to go.  There wasn’t even an article
about this episode in the “Journal.”  The boys wondered
why?  Seems like the Sheriff would have cherished the free
publicity since he had an elected position.  Probably the
publicity would have raised the question: Why didn’t you
catch them?  Lawmen know that you can’t catch them all,
but sooner or later you will catch most of them.