Boomers look back on many great memories from our youth as well as some that were not so great. One of those memories we’d all like to forget is our first foray into a life of crime and getting caught. I’m talking about “sticky little fingers” and most kids have them. They see something they want and take it.
I was a relatively innocent six-year old until I was led down the primrose path by Satan’s two grandchildren – Dicky Guy and Billy Richmond. They were much older and wiser, at 7 and 7 1/2 respectively. We had gone to a Superman Serial at the Palace Theater in Beckley WV and when it was over, we were allowed to walk home by ourselves. I guess our parents figured who would want us? If anybody tried to kidnap us, they’d probably end up paying the ranson so our parents would take us back. In those days, nobody worried about child abduction because it never happened.
After the movies, Dicky said to Billy, “Let’s go to the store. I want a new yo-yo.” So off we went to the dime store and rummaged among the shelves in the toy department. Dicky got his yo-yo and Billie picked up a nice toy truck, then they put them in their pockets. I was stunned. This wasn’t supposed to happen – was it?
“Get something, Jimmie,” the devil’s progenies tempted. I saw a neat little toy cap gun. It was 25 cents, but I didn’t have any money left over after the movies.
“Put it your pocket,” they said. “No one will ever know.”
So I did and we played with our new toys all the way home.
When I got home, I sensed I may have something of a problem explaining the toy cap gun since I didn’t have one before I went to the movies, and now I did.
This was going to be awkward, so I decided to bury it in the yard and simply dig it up any time I wanted to play cops and robbers. I put the toy gun in a tin Band Aid box and was trying my best to bury it using a kitchen spoon when Daddy looked over my shoulder and asked if I needed any help.
I had been busted. It looked like San Quentin for a life term.
I was escorted inside and endured a spirited and lengthy lecture about not taking things that don’t belong to you. After promising never to do such a thing again – and making sure that Mom and Dad knew that Dicky and Billy put me up to it – I thought I was in the free and clear, until Daddy said, “Let’s go!”
Let’s go? Go where?
To the dime store and take the toy gun back and apologize to the store manager, that’s where.
“”I hope for your sake he doesn’t press charges,” Daddy said.
Press charges? It looked like San Quentin after all.
We entered the store, found the manager and then I spilled my guts. It was like going to confession and I wasn’t even Catholic.
The store manger got down on one knee and we went eyeball to eyeball for what seemed like three years, but was probably for only a few seconds.
“We’ll let you go this time,” the manager said. “But don’t ever do it again.”
As Boomers, we remember many sayings from our youth, not the least of which was this: Crime doesn’t pay!