My Tobacco Shoplifting Crime Spree When I was 12 Years Old
By: Don Simkovich
Tags: Teens, Crime, Crime Fiction, Cigarettes, Kids

Boiling hot water to make instant coffee was a devious act in my fifth grade. We’d do it at a friend’s house when his parents weren’t home. He knew how to put the kettle and he’d yank out the Sanka or other decaf crystals when his mom or dad went out for an errand.

We’d chuckle when the water boiled and doused the coffee at the bottom of our cups, feeling like we were getting away with something big. On occasion, his parents came home early but fortunately their parking strip was about fifty yards away from the house. They’d have to talk down a flight of flagstone steps and across a stream to reach the front door.

That gave us enough time to either gulp down the last of our coffee or toss it down the sink and hide the cups.

We never got caught.

Drinking instant coffee behind an adult’s back made us feel grown up and like we could invade their world. The next step was tobacco.

Chewing tobacco, snuff and cigarettes were a common pleasure in our western Pennsylvania town. Farmers plowing corn fields, men working the coal mines and people working the small town steel mills or tool and die shops dipped into snuff, chewed wads of tobacco or got out their cigarettes to taste something besides dust or the smell of melting metal.

Snuff was the most acceptable of the three types of tobacco. The bigger kids who played Pony League baseball (our town didn’t have a high school team then) usually got a good pinch of snuff before practices and games.

So it was no surprise that on a sixth grade field trip to a fish hatchery several boys were excited but quiet when a kid named Drew gathered us around. He had a can of snuff and a few other boys dipped their fingers in it when the teachers who went with us weren’t looking.

He put it away quickly, but this was it. Snuff. Definitely the brand to get was Skoal and we decided wintergreen was the best flavor.

Getting it was the challenge. You either had to have someone hand you tobacco or you had to get it yourself. That part was tricky and yet exciting.

Out town had several grocery stores and the big one, the A&P was in town and my mother went there often. But another one, Red & White, was just a few miles away and had snuff and cigarettes in a quite tempting spot at the end of the aisles and just before the cash registers.

I talked over a strategy with a few sixth grade friends.

When the cashiers were busy checking out customers, you could walk right past the snuff rack and quickly scoop off a can and stuff it in your pocket while your mom was shopping.

I decided to do it while wearing a jeans jacket with deep enough pockets. Mom went down one aisle and then another while I walked quickly by the tobacco rack, scooped up a can and headed out to wait in the car. No one knew.

The ride home was mercifully quick and my snuff can found a home stuffed beneath shirts in the clothes drawer deep in the recesses of my walk-in closet.

It wasn’t just snuff. We decided to take up cigarettes, too. For some reason, Kool was the brand to steal and smoke. No one suspected me of shoplifting and, I’m almost sweating now recalling the incident, fortunately I didn’t get caught.

I skated close to the edge but never fell through the thin ice. One time, mom was mad at for not putting clothes away and wondered how so much dirt got in my clothes drawer. It was a small amount and by that time, the wintergreen aroma had faded.

During another instance, I was wandering out in our far field, lit up a Kool and stood behind a pile of barren limbs. It was a chilly November. I had taken a few puffs when I heard my mom call out wondering what I was doing.

I quickly stomped out the cigarette on the ground and shouted back, “Nothing.” I had just turned 13 so it was a fitting response. Teens can be so puzzling.

The end of my tobacco crime spree days came to an end that winter when I took a pinch of snuff in my bedroom and — I had swallowed just enough to feel sick. I lay down on my bed and that’s when my dad yelled up and told me to come outside and help him and my brother put up our snow fence.

I got up, not being a kid who got out of work, and stumbled downstairs and out the front door. Nausea was swirling in my stomach from the wintergreen and I felt sicker than a dog who had eaten more than his share of fat.

“What’s the matter?” Dad asked. “You not feeling well?”

I told him I wasn’t and he said I could go lie down. Funny thing was that in a few hours I felt fine. But I got rid of any remaining snuff, stuffing it into the trash can and the cigarettes were long gone.

Smoking, snuff and chewing tobacco were no longer important to me and they weren’t important to many other kids as we entered 7th grade.

It wasn’t just a phase, though. It was more a fascination with experimenting and wanting to be older than we really were. We wanted to be those older teen guys driving cars and trucks to baseball practice or the men coming home from work.

For me, God was also looming near by. I had a serious case of appendicitis that caused me to double over for a few days before I needed an emergency appendectomy. I was afraid I might die and wanted to know that God was near by. After two weeks in the hospital and taking about twenty clamps, snuff and cigarettes lost their meaning.

My life of crime was short lived and, like other boys in my town, I took a job for a year at the same grocery store where I once picked Skoal off the racks. The owner, Irene, told us to “look out for the women wearing heavy overcoats” because they could stuff extra produce into their over-sized pockets.

I never did nab anyone and I my own antics became a distant memory. My goals shifted and I didn’t have any fun hiding out, sneaking and taking risks that could land me in trouble. The closest I get to crime is researching and writing detective-thriller novels.

That’s not the case for many others who handle serious crime-oriented businesses like drug running. The profitability and promise of money that’s big and fast lures them into a lifestyle that’s hard to escape.

But not for me. My friends and I experimented but didn’t get caught. We even lost interest in coffee.