Learning to live within our own means

Published 12:00 am Tuesday, May 1, 2001

"We must learn to live within our means.

Tuesday, May 01, 2001

"We must learn to live within our means."

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– Dr. James Hess, schools superintendent

When I was probably 9 and my cousin was 11, we were downtown by ourselves.

We were living within our means, which then was maybe a buck between us. We had spent our wad on those little dime-store rockets that probably cost a dime, maybe a quarter at the most. We spent another 25 or 50 cents on a box of caps.

You would tear off a cap from the roll of caps and place it in the end of the rocket, secure the rocket tip and let it soar. When it hit the sidewalk, it would "ignite" you might say, a loud bang and would have us grinning from ear to ear.

Locke or Gog as he preferred, hurled his one time and it came down on one of those grates that used to rub up against buildings here and there along the downtown sidewalks. After studying the situation for a short time we realized that that rocket never would fly again. So what were we to do? Our "means" were spent.

We were inducted into the world of crime. Only minutes away from the Dime and Dollar, we soon were upstairs where the toys were kept.

One clerk was there, the one who was always there. She had dark hair stacked up on top of her head like many women her age did then and she wore those narrow black-rimmed glasses that slopped down that every women wore back in the early 1950s. She didn’t smile much either.

We didn’t have a strategic plan back then like they do now on the Apex Committee. No, we were spontaneous on our first caper.

After maybe five or 10 slow trips around the toy department with occasional stops where the red and black cap rockets were stored, I grabbed one and quickly stashed it my left pocket. Gog and I made our exit. At least we started to. Halfway down we heard: "Boys, hold it a minute."

Not being experienced in crime, we obliged her. Now I can’t remember if she called us back up the stairs or walked down the stairs to meet us. I guess it doesn’t matter.

"I counted the cap rockets," were her first words. "There’s one missing."

Without a strategic plan in place we had to think fast. I reached into my right hand pocket and pulled out my cap rocket – well scuffed by now. "We just have this old one," I said sweating bullets.

She just stood there and looked at us for what seemed like forever. Then she let us go.

Not too many people know about this. Gog is gone. And there is a good chance she is, too. But the act wasn’t easily forgotten.

We were members of St. Olaf Lutheran Church then and I can still remember Pastor Swenson talking about sin up there behind the pulpit. I don’t think I even knew what sin was until I heard the Lord’s Prayer and the line "forgive us our sins." What sins, I used to wonder. In those early days we just hung out around the Turtle Creek and had fun.

Stealing was sinning. It was one of those 10 Commandments. And the way I understood things – you break a commandment, you go to hell. It was that plain and simple.

I took to praying in earnest and stopped stealing; at least for the time being.

During my junior year at Austin High, an event was going on in the gym one Saturday afternoon against a Rochester team. Directly below me, on the floor, lay a Rochester jersey. Was taking this "stealing?" I related it to rivalry and by then we were attending a different Lutheran church and this minister wasn’t talking as much about sinning.

Two days passed before Red Hastings, the athletic director, was on the PA system addressing the missing jersey equating it a cardinal Big Nine sin. I threw it in his office when no one was looking.

At the school budget meeting last month I shared with the panel the words of author Wendell Berry who says, "We’re going to have to learn to live poorer."

Dr. Hess agreed saying, "Yes, we have to learn to live within our means."

No, poorer may mean forfeiting $10,000, especially with the projected teacher cuts and a cap rocket falling through a grid in 1953 when one is 9.