Busted in LeMars for the first time

After I'd lived in LeMars for awhile I had a few friends and knew the best places to go to shoplift, etc. I mostly hung out at the pool hall/restaurant I worked at on Sunday mornings or the truck stop.

One day I learned that you could take pennies and grind the edge off of them and vending machines and pinball machines would take them as dimes. I haven't tried that since then but I wouldn't be surprised if it still works. Lol, don't do it tho.

Cigarettes used to cost 17 cents per pack from the gas station and I would grind down two pennies and use them to get a pack of cigs. Nice thing was the vending machine gave you three pennies back in change so I not only got two cent a pack cigs I also showed a profit. ;)

Then I'd take those three back to the truck stop and grind them off and head for the bowling alley. At the bowling alley a lot of kids hung out because they had 5 pinball machines and they were hidden in an out of the way spot.

I use the ground down pennies in them and win a bunch of free games and then sell the free games to other kids at about half price. Then I'd save that money and use it to play pool for money. Yep, among many other things I was also a pool hustler.

If you read the previous posts you know I was hustling pool since I was about 5 or 6 years old. I hustled pool all my life, until my eyes got so bad I couldn't see the other end of the pool table well enough to be assured of making a shot. Nope, can't play worth a damn with my glasses on.

I'm still good enough, some days, to hustle pool hustlers but those days are now pretty rare. Can't see or concentrate on the game well enough anymore to be guaranteed a win. I've also played enough pool to know what I'm doing wrong when I'm having a bad day, and, how to fix it.

Eventually, 5-6 months after I started the penny thing, I got caught doing it at the bowling alley. They called the cops and I got arrested and taken to the jail where they tried to scare me. I'll bet they thought I was retarded or something because they weren't saying or doing anything that scared me.

I wasn't the typical 'nice kid' that got arrested and cried and begged to be let go. Lol, they busted me fair and square so stand up and take the punishment like a man and don't whine about it just because you're a kid.

Nothing ever really happened about it. Something ridiculous like a months probation or some damn thing. Nothing big enough to remember or make an impression. Plus, as usual, I got the usual beating when I got home. Fists and feet. Nothing unusual.

So I'd gotten caught and nothing worth remembering had happened to me. Naturally I didn't change my ways. You see, each time I got caught at something I'd go back and analyze what I did wrong so I didn't make that mistake again.

Turns out, in the end, getting caught made me a better thief or better at whatever I was doing that wasn't quite legal. There was more to this story than that but the rest of it's for another day because things took what was, to me, a surprising twist.

Busted and stressed out but life goes on

The bus depot is now truly done. We never got another penny from there. Lol, at least the last thing we did get was a good adrenaline rush.

That leaves the paper office and my first real encounter with the law. Come on, you knew I had to get caught sooner or later. Hell, I'd been stealing and shoplifting since I was 4 or 5. It catches up with you sooner or later.

The last time I hit the paper office for money I did the usual and waited for my opportunity. When it came I took it. Small problem tho. The money bag only had 5 20 dollar bills and a couple of ones and some change.

Yep, I took all of the twenty dollar bills. 100 bucks. I wasn't going to take it all but I'd heard a noise outside and had to hurry up and get the bag back in the drawer so I ended up with the big bills.

Now I didn't know that my friend from the bus depot was going to hit it the same day. He almost got caught and the only thing for him to do was steal the whole bag. That wouldn't have been so bad but the dumb ass threw it away in a gas station on his paper route.

Naturally they noticed the bank bag and called the police. Considering it had the paper office name on it that made it fairly easy to trace to who might have done it. Dumb ass should have buried it, cut it up and tossed it in different places or burned it. But he didn't.

So he got busted for it. Lol, I didn't know that any of this had happened until the cops came to school one day and asked to talk to me. Heh, I knew it was going to be a problem right away, I just didn't know what the problem was going to be.

They took me to the police station and questioned me and I found out what it was about. I found out my friend had ratted me out to save his own ass. Being smarter than my friend I wasn't about to let that happen.

Eventually the cops called my mother to the police station. I didn't have time for her crap, I had to figure out a way to minimize my part and keep anything serious from happening to me.

I did too. I told the cops it had been my friend who showed me how to steal from the paper office, I told them I'd only taken $3.50 that I needed to pay my paper bill. I told them there had been over 100 dollars in the bag when I'd put it back. I also told them it had been my first time.

Funny but they believed all of it. My ex friend who'd ratted me out had been caught with the bag or at least caught dumping he bag so they figured he was lying about how much he got and was trying to blame it all on me. I didn't get stressed out or scared but kept my head and put all the blame on my ex friend.

Lol, my good reputation with adults saved my ass. My good grades at school saved my ass. My working hard at odd jobs saved my ass.

Meanwhile, my ex friend had bad grades and a bad reputation so they didn't believe a word he said. I ended up paying back $3.50 and he ended up paying back over a thousand. Reality is nothing happened to me legally except for getting my fingers slapped lightly by the law.

I got several severe beatings at home over it, I got grounded for life. Lol, like that meant anything to me. The beatings were normal and would have happened anyway, this time they just happened for a different reason. For alcoholics who are gone a minimum of 4 nights per week, grounding me was the least of my worries. It just didn't matter.

Besides, a month or so after I got caught we were going to move anyway so it didn't really affect my life in any way except for learning one lesson. Never, ever have a partner who can't keep his mouth shut. He did make a convenient fall guy tho.

Bottom line is my career in lying, cheating and stealing continued. Just as did the physical, sexual and mental abuse. IOW nothing freaking changed at all. It will change but not for another couple of years.