Page 17 - Demo

Seifert warned about fraudulent covers, particularly those canceled in unofficial cities. She pointed out that some were cancelled at Post Offices so far distant from the 305 designated cities that it would have been impossible to travel there and have a cover cancelled in the time allotted. Furthermore, a number of covers have surfaced that were cancelled an hour or more prior to the stamp%u2019s release. As many as 300 covers with a Project Mercury stamp were supposedly cancelled on February 20, 1962 aboard Glenn%u2019s recovery ship Noa. But because the Noa had no Project Mercury stamps aboard ship on that date, they were obviously backdated. This resulted in an investigation by Pennsylvania Congressman George Goodling, and a Naval postal clerk was eventually punished for his illegal actions. While there are some legitimate February 20, 1962 covers from the Noa, they do not have a Project Mercury stamp.Commercial cachet producers advertised that they would add their cachet to any blank cover, from any of the 305 cities, or from Cape Canaveral, for a just a few cents. As a result, many collectors mailed them blank covers to be cacheted after-the-fact. Individuals and local stamp clubs also produced cachets which were applied after February 20.Interest in the unofficial covers remained high for a number of years, and an article appeared in the First Days journal in February 1982 by Eiserman titled, %u201cTwenty Years Later...Project Mercury Revisited.%u201d By then, it was well known that covers didn%u2019t exist for all of the 305 cities. For example, in Ohio, a heavy late-winter storm blanketed parts of the state with enough snow that it prevented the Post Offices in Mansfield and Marion from selling any stamps on February 20, 1962. And in Warren, Pennsylvania, the %u201csecret packages%u201d of stamps weren%u2019t opened until after the customer windows had already closed. When I was a boy, I was only mildly interested in outer space. Instead, I busied myself building plastic model-car kits, plaster mountains for my HO-gauge train layout, and flying balsa-and-fabric model airplanes. Even though it was a time when the news was dominated by tests of atomic bombs and missiles, model rockets didn%u2019t draw my attention. Still, I did look up at Sputnik as it crossed the night sky, and later watched the Echo satellite do the same. To me, the experience was no more memorable than seeing the contrail of a jet flying high overhead.About a year before John Glenn%u2019s historic orbital flight, my parents took me along on a vacation to Florida. On the way down, Dad detoured from the most direct route, so we could drive through Huntsville, Alabama. We passed by the Redstone Arsenal where von Braun and his team were building missiles. It was just after dark, so the facility was closed, and it was raining. Yet through the gloaming, we could see the murky outlines of large rockets%u2014or maybe they were just parts of rockets, lying on their sides. I wasn%u2019t too impressed. Then next day, we saw a launch from Cape Canaveral as we drove down a highway. It wasn%u2019t on our agenda, and we weren%u2019t very close, so we saw only a thin exhaust trail rising upward in the far distance. Again, to me, it was about as impressive as a jet%u2019s contrail.