As a youngster, all of my heroes were from the semi-glorified, bad guys category. Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Machine Gun Kelly, and John Dillinger, just to name a few. It naturally followed that while my peers focused on aspirations like cowboy, fireman, cop, etc., my career choice was bank robber. I felt that by studying the mistakes of my famous predecessors, I would be able to avoid the somewhat less attractive, career ending results they achieved. Take Jesse James for instance, he was shot from behind by a friend. The solution here was simple enough-don’t make friends. Dillinger’s final mistake was equally obvious to my young mind. Gunned down by the FBI outside the Biograph Theater, he paid the price for going to a movie with a dame. (Girls were “dames” in my robber-in-training lexicon at the time, unless Mom was in earshot). Finally, the mistake they all made was one I was resolved to avoid at all costs. They all killed other people and thereby dramatically increased the odds that their retirement would be the result of lead projectiles passing through their vital organs, rather than the exercise of attractive options. As the links to Wikipedia above illustrate, only Machine Gun Kelly managed to die of natural causes, and that after spending his last 21 years in prison. Even as a youngster, I recognized that I wanted more options and more attractive options than serious lead poisoning, jail while still vital and active, or the only alternative promulgated by my Mom and the teachers at school.
The mantra from Mom and teachers went as follows: “you must do well in school, so you can get a good job, so you can save money, so you can retire comfortably, and not go to the poorhouse.
To my mind, this information came from folks who had totally lost any concept of how hard “do well in school” actually was. Further, what kind of a life is working hard all week for years on end, just to end up old, tired, and constantly worried that the money would run out before I do? On the other hand, as a clever and successful bank robber, I could more or less blow off school to the extent that report card day didn’t mean whipping day when I got home. I could take up my profession and blow the money, as fast as it came in, on anything I wanted-easy come, easy go. When I got too old to cope with the rigors of my chosen profession, and found myself broke, I could just surrender, confess, and go someplace like Alcatraz where someone else controlled every moment of my day, just like Grandma at Shady Acres Retirement Home-only free. On the other hand, if money I couldn’t blow fast enough had piled up somewhere, I could just quietly drift off into the sunset to do whatever well-financed sunset drifters did after that point. I figured the sunset-drifting part would flesh itself out as I grew older and penetrated the mysteries of grown-up fun.
So, what’s not to like?
My plan held together for some years after its initial inception as a concrete thing in my mind, and I continued to take lessons from both historical and contemporary bad guys. Newspaper stories proved to be a tremendous source for building my list of bank robbing not-to-dos, such as: If a cop gets in the teller line behind or beside you, don’t try your luck anyway, don’t rob a bank then wait at the nearest bus stop for a getaway vehicle, and never, ever divulge your occupation to anyone for any reason. Time after time I read about acts of stupidity, desperation, or duplicity that brought the hand of the law down on those I had made my teachers. As a result of these lessons, I could easily see that not needing the fruits of my labor to maintain appearances and effect getaways, on a job by job basis, would eliminate a great many common pitfalls. Desperadoes tear away from the scene in any old car that will serve, then either hang out in flea-bag hotels or try to use the stolen cash for last-minute transportation out of town. A slick professional would step calmly into a rented limo, hang out in a prepaid luxury hotel until things cooled down a little, then arrive at the airport with golf clubs, lots of luggage, and a ticket bought and paid for weeks in advance. Appearances were everything and strangely enough it was the process of accumulating the resources to maintain those appearances, during my bank robbing debut, that caused the whole thing to unravel.
I delivered papers in the morning, sold do-nuts door to door after school, and eventually lied about my age to get a job in a roadside produce market. Every step of the way, I fed my piggy-bank, eschewing the trivia the average twelve year-old would blow their money on. I collected kudos from my Mom and Grandma for being a serious young man who was obviously on the right track. When the pig was stuffed full, Mom said, “You need to start a bank account to keep that safe. It’s more than you want to lose.”
I thought, “It’s more than I want them to lose for me too”, but I knew better than to argue. This was a woman who lived her whole life without ever once being gainsaid to any effect. Within days we were at the bank. I with my cash in a paper bag, and Mom standing back while I “learned something about how business was conducted.” Neither I nor Mom had any idea at the outset how much I would learn in that few minutes at the teller’s window.
Anyway, the process was simple, and before I knew it I had my little bank book with $147.53 penciled neatly in the balance box on page one. That’s when I asked, “Has this bank ever been robbed?”The conversation that followed, irrevocably changing my chosen career path, went something like this:
“No, we’ve never been robbed. Why do you ask?”
“Because I don’t want to lose my money,” I said.
She said, “You won’t lose your money even if we get robbed. Your money is insured by the government, so it gets replaced if it’s stolen from us.”
I asked, “Whose money replaces it?”
She answered, “Why pretty much everybody’s I guess. The government gets its money from all of us, so a bank robber is really robbing you and me and your mother over there, just as if they’d stuck their gun in all of our faces.”
It took a few days for all of the ramifications of my exchange with the bank teller lady to penetrate my young mind, but I knew right away my plans had to change. The cops didn’t scare me at that point in life, but if I held up Mom there’d be hell to pay and nowhere to hide.
