Apr. 26, 2007 - 21:59 MDT

GRADE SCHOOL RACKETEER

In those days, money was few and far between. Penny candy only cost a penny, yet labor involved in earning that penny made it costly to a kid.

Food I had at home, extra goodies was my craving. Some of my pals and I schemed to score a bit of income daily.

There was a Red And White Store in our neighborhood who although they charged for pop bottles and reimbursed those who turned them back in, had the habit of storing their empties outdoors at the back of the store.

On our way home from school each day, each of us would nab a few bottles and store them at home in sheds, etc.

Every so often we would haul our loot to another grocery store and get our two cents a bottle in cold copper cash.

This was in the days when kids would stand by the railroad tracks and call the engineers and firemen unprintable names, and the fireman would throw lumps of coal at them. (Sometimes I think that was an act of charity on the fireman's part).

I remember clearly the huge armload of fliers that would be tucked in my arms to deliver door to door in our neighborhoods, by the grocers. Guess I talked before about receiving a quarter for the job having worn out dollars worth of shoe leather doing it. Maybe I should have felt guilty then, only after the years passed did I realize that I was a pre-teen brigand of the first water.

How can a guy twelve-step events that he created over fifty years ago ? Perhaps I should try to atone for all the fruit, melons and stuff we stole on the farms nearby too - - - - - but the daring was great and the thrill of outrunning blasts of shotgun buckshot made us in our mind macho gauchos.

I think looking back that what little we kids took didn't cause any hurt though. Maybe it did and I feel hopelessly guilty. The time is past, I can do nothing except blather now. But once upon a long time ago I was a GRADE SCHOOL RACKETEER . . . . . . . . . . .

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