Today at the “Smiths” supermarket I paid forty-something bucks for a plastic bag of groceries that I could easily carry with one hand. And, gas at the “Smiths” pump was almost $5 a gallon.
Times have surely changed.
Today’s sticker-shock moment made me nostalgic about my early days (in the 1950’s) when my Mom would pile me and my brother and two sisters and German Shepherd dog “Duke” into our small Ford station wagon and head down to “Market Basket” to buy groceries. She probably shopped every two weeks and would fill up a couple of large shopping carts with necessities. The total bill was probably $70 to $90, back when a hundred bucks was hard to come by.
Most of the time, the store manager would hustle over and help Mom ferry the carts and kids out to the parking lot. My mother, who came from humble beginnings, felt proud of herself that she was such a major customer that she received V.I.P. service. (Yeah, maybe, but she was also a very good-looking woman. That might have explained the shit-eating-grin of the store manager as he tripped over himself to impress her.)
The fact that my Mom bought a lot of groceries meant that store personnel knew her not only at “Market Basket” but also at the nearby “Food City” supermarket. This came back to haunt me a couple of years later.
For some reason, when I was between 9 and 11 years old, I began to do some shoplifting, probably because I was bored and it was exciting. Candy and baseball cards (in the Topps gum packs) were the usual items that me and my buddies pilfered. Anyway, it was pretty innocent juvenile misbehavior. Or, at least that’s what I thought until I got caught.
I was in “Food City” one day with a friend, and we had loaded up our jackets with candy bars and were headed out of the store when we got braced by the store manager: “Are you going to pay for those?” Uh, oh, I thought. “I guess we forgot to pay. Maybe we don’t need all of them.”, I offered. Then the store manager uttered the dreaded words: “I know your Mother: she’s a regular customer here.” Omigod, I just about shit my pants. I loved my Mom and I would be mortified if she found out that I was a common criminal.
Maybe because she was such a valued customer, the guy gave me a break and said, after confiscating our loot, “Don’t come back here again without your Mother.” Oh, Man, the sun was shining on me that day: a reprise from the gallows!
I don’t know if that store manager told my Mom. If so, she never mentioned it.
I wasn’t a bad kid, but I suppose I was somewhat mischievous and a risk-taker. Not that long afterward, I was hanging out with my nextdoor neighbor Mike Vaughan, we were riding our bikes down near “Food City” (of all places!), and we decided to use the restroom at a gas station across the street. After doing our business, it dawned on us that we could vandalize the bathroom and no one would know. And so, of course, we two idiots proceeded to trash the place for fun. Our noisy frivolity must have caught the attention of someone, because the door swung open and there was the gas station owner… in a very foul mood.
Suffice it to say that we paid dearly for our indiscretion. Mike, whose father was a large bald-headed L.A. police officer with a mean streak, beat the crap out of his son that evening. We could hear the mayhem from our home nextdoor. Not to be outdone, my Dad, a well-muscled mechanic who had a finely polished Carnauba wood paddle called “The Stick”, worked over my butt with it until he got arm-weary. The next day, he marched my sore ass down to the gas station, made me apologize to the owner, and then volunteered me to work, as a slave, for the owner for a week, spitshining the bathrooms, men and women. I felt like Jim Nabors’s hapless character, the Permanent Latrine Orderly, in “No Time For Sergeants”. What a loser I was.
This dumbass incident pretty much ended my life of crime.
Now, I’m not saying that I became an altar boy or anything: I was, after all, still a boy. And, after all, boys will be boys.
Our little neighborhood “gang” of four White guys used to do stupid stuff just because we could. We used to get into the city storm sewer system and walk for miles under there. We’d sneak onto the local public golf course and make money finding and selling lost golf balls to golfers. Occasionally, on the weekend, we’d climb up onto the roof of the local elementary school and run about like fools. Once, I recall, a water balloon was dropped on or very near the Principal. (Luckily, my Dad didn’t find out about this prank or he would have keelhauled me, for sure.) After Fourth of July, we’d scour the neighborhoods for dud fireworks, collect the gun powder, and make things that we could blow up. One time, my brother Terry threw a sparkler over a house, it caught a hill on fire, and threatened to burn down our buddies house (until the Fire Department came and saved the day).
Like I said, we did dumb stuff probably because we were young idiots, not criminals. We were “Jackass” long before they made the movie. It’s part of growing up, I suppose. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?
Why am I telling you this stuff? How did I get off on this tangent???
Oh, yeah, buying groceries, my Mom, shoplifting, etc.
Which reminds me, have you heard the old saw that, “Crime doesn’t pay”?
Recall those baseball cards that I used to pilfer? For a couple of years, me and my thief buddy Mike stole scads of Topps baseball card packs. This was back in the Fifties, probably the heyday of baseball card collecting. We had all of the Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams, Willie Mays, Stan Musial, etc. “rookie cards” and they were virgin, with the chewing gum smell still attached. I kept my favorites in a large shoebox: it was my Holy Grail.
Man, if I still had those cards, they’d be worth some serious bucks.
But, alas, I think my Mom knew that my precious stash was fruit of the poisonous tree. Her son didn’t have any money; how could he have bought them? When we moved from Southern California to Northern California in 1959, my little treasure trove of stolen baseball cards mysteriously disappeared, probably destined for the local landfill.
It was almost like someone was wiping the slate clean for me.
My Mom never said a word about those baseball cards.