Odd Jobs for a Student, Circa 1960

Stealing from Woolworth’s Five and Ten was a rite of passage for us as kids. You couldn’t become a teenager without shoplifting once. I pushed a water pistol up my sleeve, and walked out the door. Instead of feeling a rush, I was ashamed of what I had done. Although I never stole anything since, I did keep my booty. I had friends whose exploits would make a kleptomaniac proud. They would steal a Woolworth’s bag and then fill it with items. Then, walk out of the store with the bag in full view. Everyone would assume they had made purchases.

Ironically, they hired me as a floor manager. My responsibilities were catching shoplifters, and ejecting drunks and addicts. I worked after school and on weekends at Woolworth’s Five and Ten – located near Times Square.

Other Woolworths were picketed because they didn’t hire blacks, Not us – maybe because our head of security was black. One day, he asked me to eject a drug addict raising a ruckus in the basement. I went downstairs and saw this big, black derelict. There was no way would I fight that monstrous goon. I told the manager to have a black employee eject him. It would give us a black eye (no pun intended) if customers saw a white guy throwing a black guy out of the store. Thankfully for me, he agreed.

I turned a shoplifter I caught over to security. Two  guards brought him into an office to scare him so he would not shoplift here again. The shoplifter tried to punch one of the security men. They beat the stuffing out of the guy, and threw him out in the street.

Previously, I hawked a product called “Willie the Missile Man” for them – A windup toy with suction cups on it. Pulling the string out wound up the spring. Release the string, and it would walk up a glass incline. I would repeatedly put Willies on the incline saying “He creeps. He crawls. He climbs the walls. Willie the missile Man – only one dollar”. It was fun and easy, but eventually, their supply disappeared.

Next, I hawked a toy that gave the illusion of printing money. You preloaded a dollar bill into it, by cranking the handle counterclockwise. Then you put a blank paper the size of a dollar on one side, and turned the crank clockwise. As the blank paper entered on one side, the dollar bill exited the other side. It cost $3, and sold like hotcakes. Most were returned by people who expected it to really turn paper into money. Stuck with a large inventory, management  dressed me in a convict uniform, including a ball and chain on my leg. I finished my pitch by pointing to my convict uniform and saying: “And this machine doesn’t really make money. If it did you would end up like me”. Less people bought them, but those who did, kept them. New Yorkers are very complacent. On breaks, I sat at the lunch counter in my convict uniform. I would but the ball and chain on the lunch counter and ask a customer for a match. No one ever questioned my garb, nor notified the authorities. Eventually, we sold out of the machines, and I was out of a job.