Rory Gallagher Stunned Me When I was 13!

After haphazardly trying a few times in Google Earth, I finally found the location on Google Maps of what was probably the first real rock concert I ever attended. Back in September of 1972, I was 13 years old and just beginning to get serious about playing guitar. Thanks to an older brother, I was exposed to many bands I probably wouldn't have heard of at the time had I only paid attention to the usual radio fare. Along with guys like Johnny Winter, Rick Derringer, Mick Ronson—Rory Gallagher was a huge inspiration for my budding interest in guitar. We had a couple of his albums and were both pretty keen on how good he was, and how different, compared to some of the more well-known players of the time.

I had the great good fortune to see Rory Gallagher play in a tiny venue WAY out in the boondocks of central Pennsylvania. It was at a place called "The Lodge"; it was actually the lodge for a small-and-failing ski area. Local bands played there on the weekends; Harrisburg PA-native Dan Hartman played there at least a few times that I remember with his band The Legends.

The place was tiny—150 people pretty much packed the house. How they managed to get Rory Gallagher booked to play there will remain a mystery to me forever, I suppose, but it was an extraordinary event. Bands at The Lodge played at floor level, and there I was, a snot-nosed kid of 13, just starting to get serious about playing guitar, and one of my favorite inspirations was there blowin' the roof off the place. I stood about 5 feet away from him the whole time, through 2 hour-long sets and about another hour of encores. There was all the keg beer you could drink, they weren't checking IDs, and I was in heaven.Visit my arcane addition to Google Maps, and don't forget to click on the tiny little blue skier icon. Full Story & Permalink

Time Warp Coin

(Click Image to Enlarge)      Last week I stopped at the local con-
venience store and got a small fountain Coke. 79¢ + 6% sales tax = 84¢. 16¢ change from my dollar. I was in kind of a hurry so I just grabbed the change and shoved it in my pocket without even looking.

Yesterday, I was gathering up my clothes to do laundry and the pair of shorts I had worn to the store decided to divest itself of the change I had shoved in the pocket. As I was picking up the coins i noticed there was something different about the "penny."

It looked like a badly tarnished one-cent piece, but, hmm...what's this? The edge of the coin was flute-milled, like a dime. I shoved my glasses up on my forehead and looked a little closer. This wasn't like any coin I had ever seen.

Sooo, I took it to the sink and tried to clean it off—first with some dish liquid, then with Barkeeper's Friend. It got a little cleaner, but no brighter. Then I tried Tarn-X and then jewelry cleaner, then vinegar and baking soda. Not much luck with them, either.

But, it got cleaned up enough to see what it is: A badly worn 5 pfennig piece, dated 1944, minted in Nazi Germany. Never saw one before, or even knew about them.

According to this Wikipedia article, they are made of a zinc-aluminum alloy. 1944 was the last year for coins bearing a swastika, for obvious reasons.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it, since it's too beat up to be worth much of anything. I suppose it'll just end up forgotten in a drawer or a box, forgotten like so much other weird junk we all collect over the years. Full Story & Permalink