I Was A Preteen Cat Burglar.

I always wanted to be rich. We were not rich. To me rich meant having nice things and lots of money. I had none. I told my Dad I wanted to be rich and asked about an allowance. He told me that on his postman wages he could not give me an allowance and suggested a paper route. So I contacted the local paper and asked about a paper route and they told me the only route available was on the other side of town. Well that was three miles away but I was desperate for money so I took the route. It was actually quite a good route. I lived in an almost rural part of town but the route was in the more suburban end of town and that meant the people were more upscale and the houses a bit close together. The advantage of both was people with more money tended to tip better and with houses close together that meant I could serve a lot of customers. In total I had 122 customers and that was a lot. Now the paper was ten cents a copy, 25 cents for Sunday and most people got the paper every day. A weeks worth of paper delivery was 75 cents and I got 25 cents out of that. Most people tipped me a quarter for a week so that was a very lucrative (for 1962) $59 a week average. It meant getting up at 4 am every morning and adding four baskets to my bicycle and adding a red wagon and adding an extra trip on Sunday's but I completed my paper route in time for school every morning. When my Dad found out how much I made he nearly shit a brick. He was making $63 a week delivering mail and that took him longer than it took me to deliver papers because he had more people on his route. Basically I had the same job my Dad did but I was only 12.

So what does this have to do with being a cat burglar?

You see, when I was doing my route I learned some interesting things. Most of the people on my route were rich compared to me. Most had much nicer things than we did. Their houses were 2-10 times as big. Most had new or newer cars. But more importantly, I always knew when someone went away for a few days or weeks because they would always ask me to suspend their paper delivery. This was very valuable information to a 12 year old aspiring master thief.

I didn't start out thinking I was going to break into houses. It was just a little thing really. Mr. Duffy asked me to hold his paper for two weeks as he was going to be out of town. That is what gave me the idea. So of course I did and stock piled them in my bedroom closet until the date of his return and I would then give him all his papers. I had observed that he had kept a key under the door mat. It was by accident you see. He tripped over the mat one day when he was retrieving his paper just as I had delivered it and I saw the shiny brass key slip out from under it. I had seen that on TV shows but I didn't think anyone would be brainless enough to actually keep their key there. Mr. Duffy did. So I sneaked out of my room a couple of nights later at 2am and got to Mr. Duffy's house at 2:45 and picked up the mat and sure enough there was the key. His house was shaded by a lot of evergreens so the neighbors could not see what I was doing. Also I knew he didn't have a dog. A paper boy who delivers to the door knows which houses have dogs and which ones don't and he makes friends with all the dogs. Even if Mr. Duffy had a dog I'd have been friends with it and if caught I would have claimed I was feeding said dog and I would have had dog food and treats with me. Nobody would have questioned it except the time of day and I could always say I had forgotten and came back late so the dog wouldn't starve but all that's a moot point because Mr. Duffy didn't have a dog. I knew he had a ceramic jar in the hallway that he kept some money in but I wasn't planning to touch that due to the fact that he knew that I knew it was there. I let myself in and explored in the light of the very convenient full moon.

This is when I discovered Mr. Duffy was a pervert. I found quite a stash of naughty magazines with naked ladies in them under his bed. But I wasn't really that interested though I did thumb through them and took one of the more interesting ones.

I found about $40 in his dresser and on top was a wood box with some cufflinks and change. I took all the silver and the $40 and found a key ring. I took it in case I found an interesting lock.

Next I explored his office and I know it's cliché but there was a safe behind one of his pictures and one of the keys fit the safe. IDIOT! In the safe I hit the jackpot. There was over $5000 in mixed bills and about fifty silver dollars and three gold dollars. I cleaned him out. On the way out I thought better of ignoring the jar of money so I emptied that and took my loot home with me. Thus was the beginning of a very lucrative five year career as a cat burglar.