THE BIG ADVENTURE

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As kids, we didn't consider ourselves a gang in the modern sense of the word but since we lived in close proximity to one another we hung out together.

We had reached the ripe age of 10 and were full of ourselves. One boy was named Gilbert and was a foster child living with what seemed to be real old people (about age fifty).

To understand what happened next you need to realize that we had difficulty getting money for the picture show even though the ticket only cost a dime.

Any way Gilbert discovered a gold mine, well actually it was where his foster parents kept their stash. There were hundreds of dollars hidden there; this was in the late thirties.

We noticed Gilbert had money for whatever he wanted and finally he confessed and told us he was taking money from the family stash. There were about five of us that decided we should share in his new found wealth.

All of our sports equipment was rag tag junk that we had managed to acquire and some of us didn't have baseball gloves and had to play barehanded. We had a meeting and discussed our pressing needs and decided to go downtown and remedy our problem.

What happen next was almost like a feeding frenzy. We had unlimited funds so everyone got a new fielders mitt. Of course we had to have the best and paid around twelve dollars each for them. That is a lot of money when ten cents was hard to come by.

Before the day was out we had equipment for baseball, basketball, football with all accessories, so much we could hardly carry it home and then we had to hide it out back in order not to have to answer questions about where it came from.

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We decided (we were very democratic and voted) to go to San Francisco so we took the A train across the Bay Bridge and were on our way to the beach (Something like Coney Island).  Since we didn't know which bus to take to reach the beach, we all jumped into a taxi and said, “To the beach please!”

The driver said it would cost about six dollars whereupon we shouted, “We have the money let’s go." The driver stared at us for awhile not saying anything and then he threw us out of his cab.

Having suffered that rejection (from which we didn't soon recover) we walked down Market Street until we found a movie we wanted to see and after that we went home very disappointed.

Things were going good until Gilbert got caught with his hand in the till and then it hit the fan. As it turned out he implicated all of us and lied the best he could about what happened. We all had to face the music and the decision was made that we had to pay for our mitts so when asked how much they cost we lied and said three dollars instead of twelve. It took awhile but I finally paid off my wonderful baseball glove.

Gilbert had almost three hundred dollars on him when he was caught and was threaten to be kicked out of the home if he did that again.

After awhile he found a large bag that was full of change so heavy you could hardly pick it up (the folding money had been put in a bank) and he would only take just enough for our necessities like the movies, candy and popcorn. He was older and wiser and never got caught pilfering that.

Soon after that World War II started and the gang found other interests and went different ways with new friends.

This post has been linked with Joan Davis   Sharing His Beauty

This post is also shared at Hazel’s “Tell Me a True Story” at
 http://letmetelluastory.blogspot.com/

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