5 and Dime

Ayah, the 5 and Dime, my first job, I remember it well. A love/hate relationship to say the least! I loved it because now, I was a real man with a real job. I hated it simply because I had to WORK, don’t you just hate when that happens. Now known as Wool mart, it was originally the Woolworth Company. Nicknamed the “5 and Dime” because at one time most items sold there were around that price. Sorta like the dollar stores of today, go figure, inflation or what! Anyway, its seems like only yesterday I was sweeping the floors, moving boxes around, unloading trucks and doing the things that a young stock boy does. But I won’t bore you with those types of details. There was something else going on besides the actual work! I considered myself underpaid, I was underage and working illegally and I was confused novice hoodlum at his first real job. Allow me to regurgitate some of those highlights.
$1.25 minimum wage, certainly unfair compensation for someone as important as me, or so I thought. I think it goes back to the fact that I was pretty much soiled as an only child, were money was just a question of asking for it. Damn, I was making more dough cutting lawns when really wanted to. The problem was I never really wanted to and now I had to perform…real work…all day long…for a buck and a quarter! Some times, it sucked to be me. But hey, real job, real man and now real work.
At the time of my first job, at Woolworths, I was only fourteen years old. I was too young to have a job, a real one anyway. The age for that in Connecticut was 16 years or older, I lied. However, it goes one-step further that. This will sort of bleeds into the next section, the hoodlum part that is. Nevertheless, back to the redaction at hand. I had devised a plan to get the job regardless of my age. Since I was under-age and didn’t have proper ID, I went to the social security office armed with phony birth certificate, stating that I was sixteen. I had gotten it from one of my young hoodlum friends of course. I signed up for a social security card, and got one! So not only was I too young to be working, but I had obtained a SS card illegally. Fine young hoodlum indeed, but just think I can retire two years early!
Here’s the part I remember the most, the hoodlum part. There were two of us that used the above-mentioned scam to get a job at Woolworths. Jimmy K and myself, we hung with the same gang in the projects. Anyway, Jimmy was a little further advanced in his hoodlum training than I was. He was a true blossoming thief. Being stock dudes, we had the run of the place, upstairs, backroom, all the offices. We immediately learned where everything was located. Where the free stuff was, all the good hiding places and where they kept the money. Anyway, one day Jimmy quit his job, I couldn’t figure it out at the time, but that would soon change. The very next day the managers called me into the office and much to my dismay there were detectives waiting to question a suspect, me! Seems five thousand dollars was taken from the office safe the day before. Since I working that day, I was a suspect, along with everyone else as it turns out. Of course, I kept to the young hoodlum code of silence and said nothing. After work that afternoon, I went straight to Jimmies house and demanded a cut, which he gave me! I guess I wasn’t that confused after all. Well, nothing ever came of that incident, though it would be glimpse of things to come. However, you’ll have to wait for the book for those stories.
Well, there you have it, my first job or better yet, the Woolworths affair. I haven’t reflected on those days in a long, long time. Hind-sight is always so useless in a sense. I look at the behavior and principles I was beginning to adopt at such a young age, it saddens me. They would deliver me to very dark and violent places in the years to come. In the future, Pop would say, “Many moons have pasted” in his strange of saying its ok to forgive yourself. He also would say “never regret the past or shut the door on it! It’s the only one you have” I’ve just started to listen to him.