When I was a child, I stole something exactly one time. My mother made sure that I learned a lesson and never repeated such a travesty again!
Lifesavers
by Mendy Thompson
10/20/2003
Back in the early 1960’s my mom always took me to Carl Miller’s store with her when she would go grocery shopping. His store was a 2-story white building just a block and a half from our house on East Main Street in Oak Hill, Ohio. The size of the storefront was probably no more than 30 feet wide and the retail area was just about 40 feet deep. It had two big picture windows on either side of the front door and a wood floor that had seen better days. The checkout counter was near the door and there were isles of canned goods, bread, flour and sugar, cereals and a few household items, cleaners, detergents, etc. Near the back was the meat case where we could buy fresh hamburger, lunchmeats, cheeses and so on.
Looking toward the front on the right hand side was a small freezer that held the important things. That is where I spent most of my time, peering in at the orange push-ups, the different flavored Popsicles, the tiny cups of ice cream that came with a little wooden spoon. There was vanilla, chocolate and strawberry swirl. I would try to pick out a treat that I wanted and then convince Mom that I needed it that day.
Carl was a white-haired older man with a crew cut, a large nose and black rimmed square glasses that were in style in the 50’s and 60’s. He kind of had that W. C. Fields look about him. I think he may have been a flirt with the ladies even though his wife Viola was usually around, either at the store or across the street at their house. He was friendly enough and while I was biding time, sometimes he would let me get in his old black car that sat outside the store. He used it for his deliveries when someone called in a grocery order (yes, there used to be such a thing as grocery deliveries). I remember the look and feel of that car still today. It was the model that looked like the new PT Cruisers of today. It had running boards on the outside and a huge steering wheel. I would get behind the wheel and pretend I was driving to deliver the groceries someone had ordered.
Anyway, I would gaze into the freezer case while Mom was shopping. If I was good and there was enough money, she would buy me a 7-up or banana flavored Popsicle. Those, and orange push-ups and Dreamsicles (orange on the outside, vanilla on the inside), were my favorites. And sometimes she would buy Fizzies for me. For those of you that don’t know, that was a drink you would mix like Kool-Aid and it had a big tablet like an Alka-Seltzer that you dropped in the water. It would fizz up and then you would drink it. My favorite was root beer.
Well, on this summer day in 1961 when I was five years old, Mom and I had walked to the store. While she was getting her things from the shelves and Carl was slicing her lunchmeat and cheese for her, I was allowed to have half a 7-Up Popsicle that was left in the freezer case. I think Carl just gave it to me that day….sometimes they were broken in half in the freezer and someone had already eaten the other half of this one. Satisfied in the frozen treat department, I asked if I could have some candy. Evidently, I was told no. So after all was paid and bagged up, we started for home.
Back then, little girls wore dresses and sometimes shorts if it was summer, but we didn’t wear slacks or jeans. I remember distinctly that I had on a yellow flowered summer dress. We started down the sidewalk and my excitement couldn’t be contained, even half a block. I tugged at my dress tail and pulled it up so that I could reach in the waste band of my under panties. There, under the elastic, I had securely stashed a colorful roll of Lifesavers while Mom had been busy shopping. I couldn’t wait any longer to get one of the fruity sweet candies in my mouth!
I pulled it out slowly and said, “Look what I got! You want one?” I guess I didn’t realize the reaction would be so negative or I would have kept it to myself and not offered her any at all!
She said, “Where did you get that?” in a very stern voice. I suddenly became very quiet and shy…. “At the store” I said in a soft voice. She snatched them out of my hand so fast I didn’t know what had happened. “Come on!” she said as she tugged at my hand and started walking back the other direction. For the life of me I couldn’t understand why she was so mad, and I mean she was MAD.
Now I was terrified. What was so wrong with taking a little 5-cent roll of Lifesavers? I’d left plenty more on the shelf for other people! I soon found out…it is called ‘stealing’ (or so she said!). She dragged me as I kicked and screamed back into the store.
Poor Carl was standing there in his white meat-cutters apron with a puzzled look and he asked what the problem was. Mom stated loudly “she stole these!” as she laid the roll of candy up on the counter. Immediately, Carl started saying “oh, it’s alright Lexie. She didn’t know, she didn’t mean anything by it. Go ahead and give them to her”.
“NO!! She will not steal and she needs to learn she has to pay for things she wants!” He backed down, for fear her wrath would turn on him! She gave me a shiny nickel and told me to give it to him. I was crying so hard, I think she had to take my hand and lay it up on the counter for me. Carl had a sorry look on his face as he took the nickel from the counter and pulled the big handle down on the side of the old cash register. It made the ‘ka-ching’ sound and he dropped the nickel in the tray when the drawer opened. Gosh, if he wanted me to have them so bad, I don’t know why she just wouldn’t let me have them! It would have made him and me both happy!
Needless to say, I didn’t enjoy the shiny fruit candy at all. It’s hard to find pleasure in the cherry, lemon, lime, pineapple and orange flavors when you are sobbing and blowing your nose the entire time. That was my first and last experience in shoplifting.
Many years later I married my husband Mark, and one of his childhood stories his mother likes to tell is about when he was 5 years old and he stole a roll of Lifesavers from the local five-and-dime store. She dragged him back and made him pay for them, even though the owner of the store said, “let him have them”.
Coincidence? I think not. We Lifesaver thieves were destined to end up together!
Fractured Frazzled Folk Fables and Fairy Farces is adult literature that satirizes famous children's stories, fables and fairy tales. The work is Jay Dubya's twenty-first e-book available in Amazon Kindle and Barnes and Noble Nook.
Fractured Frazzled Folk Fables and Fairy Farces is adult literature that satirizes famous children's stories, fables and fairy tales. The work is Jay Dubya's twenty-first e-book available in Amazon Kindle and Barnes and Noble Nook.
Lifesavers
