I always shoplifted from a very young age. I got an allowance, but it was never enough for all the comic books, airplane and tank models, and candy i wanted, so i supplemented it. I grew up in a more or less middle class household, what you call "genteel academic poverty"- when i was a kid, my dad was a junior level college professor, and my mom was a newspaper reporter, but there was never much money around. i never saw my parents work 9 to 5- i thought what adults did for money was type and occasionally yell "Can't you goddam kids keep it down a little?" My mom would say in later more affluent years after i moved out that we were never that poor- i would ask her "How do i know what Spam tastes like then?"
Anyway, when i turned 14 (1973) and was old enough to work, this hippie comix/science fiction used bookstore that had just started selling new books made me an offer: "if we give you a job, would you consider not stealing from us anymore?" This seemed like a fair offer so i accepted. The bookstore was in a town about 20 miles from where i lived in the sticks in Connecticut, in the town where the newspaper bureau where my mom filed her copy was located, which was why i had been hanging out there in the first place. So sometimes i could get a ride to work after school from my mom, but sometimes she was doing whatever, and i was supposed to go out on the road behind my parents' house and flag down the bus and take it to work. So i did that a couple times, but then i started sticking out my thumb while i waited, and usually had a free ride before the bus showed up.
People who picked me up were 1) fellow freaks or older hippies- this would be the best type of ride, no hassle, good conversation and they would often smoke their weed with you; 2) crazy and often drunk working class folks, who would also often offer weed, but also sometimes beer or speed. They would usually drive much faster (and so get me to work sooner) than the counterculturalists, but sometimes erratically due to the drunk thing; 3) old closet-cases who would hit on me because i was (if you can believe it from my ravaged profile pic of today) a cute androgynous long-haired young man with a bunch of bracelets- these guys gave me the creeps and scared me- they were full-size grown-ass men, and i wasn't big yet then. After one got particularly grabby, i started carrying my hunting knife with me, and showed it to subsequent handsy fellows. One dude tried to get me turned on by handing me one of those packs of "naked ladies" playing cards which even in the porn-starved early '70s was just fucking cheesy as a come-on gambit.
I was fighting with my parents a lot over politics, drugs and teenage rebellion shit, so realizing i could just leave whenever i wanted to was a powerful revelation. i began "running away from home" for a few days or a week pretty often, to go to demonstrations or to see bands. I had been a Boy Scout til i got thrown out for being insolent and a smartass, so i had camping gear, and i would bring my pup tent, sleeping bag, and swimming-pool air mattress in my rucksack when i went, and learned to find places to sleep behind gas stations and in cemeteries and whatnot. the most fun "running away from home" was going to Boston for the bicentennial of the Boston Tea Party in December '73, when Yippies and Zippies invaded and took over a corporate funded re-enactment of the Tea Party, and threw 50 gal drums representing oil into Boston Harbor and hung "Freeze Profits Not People!" banners on the boat. I stayed for a few days at a genuine hippie commune with some older folks i met at the demo, with a sign on the door that said "Headquarters, Intergalactic Space Pirates".
In the summers, i would leave home and live in the tent, hitchhiking around, and going to Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard or Cape Cod when i needed money- i knew i could always get a job washing dishes or chopping vegetables in tourist restaurants in those places, where i knew lots of freaks who worked in kitchens.
I got arrested for "camping in the open" on Nantucket when i was 15, and had to bring the judge a receipt for boarding house rent within a week to get the charges dropped. How it happened was i was living in my tent in a wooded area across the road from a golf course. My campsite was not visible from the road, but when i hitched home from my dishwashing shift around midnight, i found my tent knocked down and my gear strewn around. I put my shit back together and went to sleep. I woke up to noises and could see there were flashlights outside, so i started shouting "You motherfuckers get the fuck away from here before i come out there and kill you!" and shit like that. You can guess what's coming: "Police! Come out of the tent very slowly with your hands first and empty!" Which i did after first cutting a hole in the floor of the tent to bury this big lump of this really strong Colombian hash, which was a thing only ever in history seen that summer- although of course i did not know that yet, it seemed most polite to not burden the poor officers with additional paperwork from a drug arrest. They made me dismantle and pack up all my gear but did not notice the small fresh hole under the tent. after the head cook at the place i was working came and bailed me out, i made him drive me there so i could dig it up.
So i got a room in a boarding house for a week to get the reciept to show the judge to get the charges dropped. The next week i moved into this half-assed hippie/freak commune called the Jungle. The Jungle was on some land owned by some rich person who had never gotten around to building a house on it, and had a small house, more of a shack, where one dude was supposed to be the caretaker and live. He was an older hippie and let anyone who needed a a place stay on the land. The Sheriff lived across the road from the entrance to the private road into the place, but for some reason never visited in spite of the constant stream of longhaired adults, teenage freex, and pretty blatant atmosphere of deviation that was the Jungle. There were a variety of habitations, sheds,tents, and various domy things. I lived in a primitive dome made by trimming and bending a circle of saplings to make a dome shape and then covered with a thick clear plastic sheet buried around the edges, with a door and some ventilation holes. It was in a shady spot, very rainproof, and pretty comfortable.
We cooked communally in the shack house, which had a gas stove (you could reach out the windows and pick blueberries for your pancakes). I would steal meat from the place where i worked by putting a new garbage bag in the barrel (since taking garbage out was one of my jobs), throwing a bunch of meat from the cooler in (keeping the coolers tidy and clean was another one of my jobs), and then putting another garbage bag in the barrel and letting it fill up. then i would take it out back, tie the bag shut in a special way, and the Jungle crew would pick it up from the garbage pile in the alley in a rusty old Jeep someone kept running. We also once stole kegs of beer from the yacht club in an epic caper involving a rowboat and breaking in through the roof. The yacht club was also good for showers that we all had the key to, and the giant dryers for sails which we would use an a form of amusement park ride, seeing how long it took to vomit (not a good idea in a centrifuge, fortunately those showers were nearby).
By age 16, i would from time to time be traveling with various girlfriends. i remember getting stuck in the rain for several days in my tiny pup tent with my GF behind a Howard Johnsons on Cape Cod, living on food and salt water taffy we would steal from the shop part, and a bowl of soup once a day in the restaurant part.
I'm sure i will think of more, but i hope you kids find some entertainment in these tales of scumbag life back when dinosaurs walked the planet, and dirt had not yet been invented.
******************************
For a man with 3 graduate degrees, i cannot spell for shit, tried to fix all the typos. I'm also a high-school drop-out, so i guess that's where i get my shit spelling skills.
Anyway, when i turned 14 (1973) and was old enough to work, this hippie comix/science fiction used bookstore that had just started selling new books made me an offer: "if we give you a job, would you consider not stealing from us anymore?" This seemed like a fair offer so i accepted. The bookstore was in a town about 20 miles from where i lived in the sticks in Connecticut, in the town where the newspaper bureau where my mom filed her copy was located, which was why i had been hanging out there in the first place. So sometimes i could get a ride to work after school from my mom, but sometimes she was doing whatever, and i was supposed to go out on the road behind my parents' house and flag down the bus and take it to work. So i did that a couple times, but then i started sticking out my thumb while i waited, and usually had a free ride before the bus showed up.
People who picked me up were 1) fellow freaks or older hippies- this would be the best type of ride, no hassle, good conversation and they would often smoke their weed with you; 2) crazy and often drunk working class folks, who would also often offer weed, but also sometimes beer or speed. They would usually drive much faster (and so get me to work sooner) than the counterculturalists, but sometimes erratically due to the drunk thing; 3) old closet-cases who would hit on me because i was (if you can believe it from my ravaged profile pic of today) a cute androgynous long-haired young man with a bunch of bracelets- these guys gave me the creeps and scared me- they were full-size grown-ass men, and i wasn't big yet then. After one got particularly grabby, i started carrying my hunting knife with me, and showed it to subsequent handsy fellows. One dude tried to get me turned on by handing me one of those packs of "naked ladies" playing cards which even in the porn-starved early '70s was just fucking cheesy as a come-on gambit.
I was fighting with my parents a lot over politics, drugs and teenage rebellion shit, so realizing i could just leave whenever i wanted to was a powerful revelation. i began "running away from home" for a few days or a week pretty often, to go to demonstrations or to see bands. I had been a Boy Scout til i got thrown out for being insolent and a smartass, so i had camping gear, and i would bring my pup tent, sleeping bag, and swimming-pool air mattress in my rucksack when i went, and learned to find places to sleep behind gas stations and in cemeteries and whatnot. the most fun "running away from home" was going to Boston for the bicentennial of the Boston Tea Party in December '73, when Yippies and Zippies invaded and took over a corporate funded re-enactment of the Tea Party, and threw 50 gal drums representing oil into Boston Harbor and hung "Freeze Profits Not People!" banners on the boat. I stayed for a few days at a genuine hippie commune with some older folks i met at the demo, with a sign on the door that said "Headquarters, Intergalactic Space Pirates".
In the summers, i would leave home and live in the tent, hitchhiking around, and going to Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard or Cape Cod when i needed money- i knew i could always get a job washing dishes or chopping vegetables in tourist restaurants in those places, where i knew lots of freaks who worked in kitchens.
I got arrested for "camping in the open" on Nantucket when i was 15, and had to bring the judge a receipt for boarding house rent within a week to get the charges dropped. How it happened was i was living in my tent in a wooded area across the road from a golf course. My campsite was not visible from the road, but when i hitched home from my dishwashing shift around midnight, i found my tent knocked down and my gear strewn around. I put my shit back together and went to sleep. I woke up to noises and could see there were flashlights outside, so i started shouting "You motherfuckers get the fuck away from here before i come out there and kill you!" and shit like that. You can guess what's coming: "Police! Come out of the tent very slowly with your hands first and empty!" Which i did after first cutting a hole in the floor of the tent to bury this big lump of this really strong Colombian hash, which was a thing only ever in history seen that summer- although of course i did not know that yet, it seemed most polite to not burden the poor officers with additional paperwork from a drug arrest. They made me dismantle and pack up all my gear but did not notice the small fresh hole under the tent. after the head cook at the place i was working came and bailed me out, i made him drive me there so i could dig it up.
So i got a room in a boarding house for a week to get the reciept to show the judge to get the charges dropped. The next week i moved into this half-assed hippie/freak commune called the Jungle. The Jungle was on some land owned by some rich person who had never gotten around to building a house on it, and had a small house, more of a shack, where one dude was supposed to be the caretaker and live. He was an older hippie and let anyone who needed a a place stay on the land. The Sheriff lived across the road from the entrance to the private road into the place, but for some reason never visited in spite of the constant stream of longhaired adults, teenage freex, and pretty blatant atmosphere of deviation that was the Jungle. There were a variety of habitations, sheds,tents, and various domy things. I lived in a primitive dome made by trimming and bending a circle of saplings to make a dome shape and then covered with a thick clear plastic sheet buried around the edges, with a door and some ventilation holes. It was in a shady spot, very rainproof, and pretty comfortable.
We cooked communally in the shack house, which had a gas stove (you could reach out the windows and pick blueberries for your pancakes). I would steal meat from the place where i worked by putting a new garbage bag in the barrel (since taking garbage out was one of my jobs), throwing a bunch of meat from the cooler in (keeping the coolers tidy and clean was another one of my jobs), and then putting another garbage bag in the barrel and letting it fill up. then i would take it out back, tie the bag shut in a special way, and the Jungle crew would pick it up from the garbage pile in the alley in a rusty old Jeep someone kept running. We also once stole kegs of beer from the yacht club in an epic caper involving a rowboat and breaking in through the roof. The yacht club was also good for showers that we all had the key to, and the giant dryers for sails which we would use an a form of amusement park ride, seeing how long it took to vomit (not a good idea in a centrifuge, fortunately those showers were nearby).
By age 16, i would from time to time be traveling with various girlfriends. i remember getting stuck in the rain for several days in my tiny pup tent with my GF behind a Howard Johnsons on Cape Cod, living on food and salt water taffy we would steal from the shop part, and a bowl of soup once a day in the restaurant part.
I'm sure i will think of more, but i hope you kids find some entertainment in these tales of scumbag life back when dinosaurs walked the planet, and dirt had not yet been invented.
******************************
For a man with 3 graduate degrees, i cannot spell for shit, tried to fix all the typos. I'm also a high-school drop-out, so i guess that's where i get my shit spelling skills.
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