Guilt by Association

We had several means of raising spending money during the summers. One was legitimate, one questionable, and the other outright illegal. The honest labor was to strip blue grass. Farmers planted and harvested blue grass seed to sell commercially. They stripped it with machines, but we walked the roads and found volunteer blue grass in the ditches. We all had hand strippers (provided by seed buyers).

The tool was a device about 12 inches wide with teeth and a handle. We could walk along, swing the stripper to get the seed and pour it in a sack, which we would then sell to a local broker.

Another money-raiser was to go out to the countryside, find scrap metal, and sell it to a junk dealer. That was perfectly legal but some of our pals would sneak around back of the junk yard, pull some scrap through a hole in the fence, and eventually sell it back to the unsuspecting dealer. We also pulled a pump from an abandoned farm and took it in to sell. Come to find out, the pump was in use, the farmer found out who took it and our parents were informed. It was a long trip back lugging that heavy pipe.

As long as I am baring my soul, I remember another escapade that remains troublesome for me to this day. It was a matter of a theft I participated in and did nothing to correct. I’ve been told most youngsters, at one time or another, take something from a store without paying for it. Some, perhaps, develop into adult shoplifters, but most -- as did I -- have such a guilty conscience it makes them even more honest as the years go by.

This incident happened one summer when a bunch of us were just hanging out and we went into the local grocery store even though none of us had any money. One of our group told us to occupy the clerk, which we did, and he stuck a pound of Velveeta cheese in his shirt and walked out. We knew the intent of the shop lifter -- and we helped eat the cheese -- but none of us had the guts to say, “This is wrong; take the cheese back.”