ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, March 27, 1996 TAG: 9603270010
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Ben Beagle
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE
I'd like to thank the U.S. Treasury for our tax refund and for telling us how the government is protecting those Americans who have $100 bills.
I know many Americans have never seen a $100 bill, but the government is going to make it harder, I think, to counterfeit one. We should be grateful that the government cares enough to enclose a detailed explanation of the new $100 bill with our refunds. If you didn't get a refund, don't come crying to me, pal.
(I tried to get a brand new $100 bill one time for a Christmas gift, but they had only fresh 20s left. Somehow, five fresh 20s aren't as nice as a new $100, so I bought a nice fruit basket and spent the rest for Napoleon brandy and eggnog.)
I hate to say it, but some of us are so dumb we don't even know Ben Franklin's picture is on the $100 bill. It would serve all of you right if you were on "Jeopardy!" with all these really smart, arrogant people and they asked whose picture is on the $100 bill and you said, "Who's Andrew Jackson?"
Just because you've never been flush enough to handle a $100 bill doesn't mean you don't have a civic duty to know whose picture is on it.
Now that you're feeling miserable about not loving your country properly, let's get on with how this new bill is going to foil counterfeiters.
The picture of Ben is larger and it has what are called "concentric fine lines" around his picture that are hard to duplicate - unless you get a real good plate man and set him up in your basement.
(I'd certainly never noticed it before, but Ben's picture seems to indicate he's in some sort of distress - like maybe he wrecked his sedan chair on the way to Independence Hall or got stood up by some bimbo in Paris. Or maybe it's just the aftereffects of being nearly electrocuted.)
There are other changes that I don't understand, including "color-shifting ink."
And there's a new watermark you can see if you hold the bill up to the light.
Things have changed since I was a boy. Take the way the pyramids have gone downhill, for example.
Then, everybody knew that if you wanted to see if a bill was counterfeit, you put it down on a piece of white paper and squiggled it violently with your thumb. If the green ink came off on the paper, it was the real thing.
Needless to say, our thumb-squiggling was largely limited to one-dollar bills.
LENGTH: Medium: 51 linesby CNB