The following is excerpted from a book entitled “The Promise”, authored by Fred Blahnik
…..Nick Stier wasn’t really a close friend of mine per se; he was instead a classmate with me in grade school back in Spring Valley, Minnesota and more like a casual acquaintance. We had been thrust together that early June in the mid to late 1960s (probably 1966) wholly by Catholicism, by the commonality of our religion. You see, when all the other kids in Spring Valley got out of school for the summer back during those bygone days of Lyndon Johnson’s troubled presidency, which corresponded in parallel fashion to the heart of the United States government’s disastrous Vietnam War adventurism, the Catholic children who called Spring Valley home still had to attend an additional week of catechism instruction immediately afterwards, taught by a group of unsmiling nuns in the same elementary school our public education classmates had just abandoned for the next three months.
And if that thought sounds as though it may have been depressing for a frisky, impatient boy with his heart and mind set on exploring every square inch of our heavily-wooded Blahnik family farm located seven miles north of town over the winsome upcoming three months of summer, believe me…..IT WAS!!!!!
So, anyway, Nick Stier and myself and a handful of other Catholic boys had ben lumped together for this extra week of religious instruction at Spring Valley Elementary School, and give us credit for doing our very best to make optimal use of the limited free time made available to us by the phalanx of nuns. I no longer remember the panoply of exact details which inform the story I am about to relate to you, but it happened some time over the course of that catechism week when we students were granted a recess by the stern but compassionate band of clergywomen, or it might even have been when we were let out a little early from our catechism classes for the day.
Alternatively, I imagine the incident could easily have transpired in the late afternoon when we Blahnik children were waiting for the ever-tardy Mom to come pick us up in her run-down, beat-up jalopy so we could thankfully finally go home and enjoy the early summer evening like every non-Catholic kid who resided within the Spring Valley school district–free of pontificating and all things religious.
In any case, Nick Stier, myself, and I believe a few other boys from our grade in school were in downtown Spring Valley just hanging out and loitering on Main Street when Nick pulled the rest of us aside and whispered some exciting news in our ears. It seemed he had somehow made or otherwise come into possession of a trove of glass slugs that could be used in vending machines without having to waste real coins in the process.
WHHAAAAATTTTTT?!?!?!
Gumballs for free?!?! Ya wouldn’t even have to pay one brown cent for ‘em?!?! Something for nothing?!?!
AMAZING!!!!!!
It all sounded way too good to be true……
I’m sure somewhere far off in the back fringes of my brain—right in that vicinity where a conscience should be emplaced and is in fact situated—alarms started going off and red lights started flashing, warning me of the inherent dishonesty of what we were about to attempt. But said were feeble sentinels with weak lungs and tiny biceps, and as such their muted protests were soundly overruled by less scrupulous gladiators heralding the glimmering prospects likely awaiting us resourceful boys if we were only to raid the penny and nickel vending machines located in the fronts of the V-Store, Ben Franklin, and perhaps one or two other variety stores in conjunction with a modest–sized supermarket, all sited in three-block downtown Spring Valley. Minnesota. Hell, we were all but guaranteed to make off with a windfall of gumballs and penny candy that we could then share fairly and democratically with each other (And you were wondering there for a second about a working conscience, weren’t you?!).
Who knows…..maybe we could even score a much-coveted miniature super-ball if we experimented with the “expensive” nickel machines and Nick’s crude slugs, bolstered by a healthy dose of good luck and additionally fortified with a few ill-directed prayers, ultimately prevailed.
Remember now too, Reader, before you start passing hasty, overly severe judgment on my reprehensible thought process: I was just a dirt-poor kid at the time from a ramshackle farm who had to constantly stand back and watch other well-off kids who lived in Spring Valley delight over expensive toys because my Blahnik family had zero free money to afford the same. So while I surely understand the cruel irony of the situation we group of boys faced that summer day—mendaciously pillaging gumball machines at the same time we were attending nearby religious classes taught by strict, altruistic Catholic nuns who constantly evangelized on the importance of veracity and leading an honorable, praiseworthy life—the idea of getting something for nothing nonetheless held tremendous appeal to me.
Well….you certainly know by now what they say about best-laid plans…..
It turns out that Nick Stier, despite all of his pre-teen cockiness and earnest assurances and boastfulness, didn’t have glass slugs that fit precisely within the contours of the designated coin slot in any of the gumball machines we perused, and then I suppose you can probably imagine what happened next (and PLEASE don’t ask me to explain why Stier used glass as his preferred substrate for making fake slugs instead of a soft metal like brass or aluminum).
I can’t recall anymore whether my misdirected classmate might have been successful in extracting one goodie from a store vending machine or possibly even two, but I do vividly recollect that shortly after our looting mission began, Nick Stier turned the crank on one store’s vending contraption and his move was answered with a loud CRAAAAACCKK as that glass slug shattered instantaneously within the machine’s designated coin slot. Obviously there was no way of getting the damned thing (or hundreds of partial “things”, as it were) out of that particular vending apparatus, so we next did what any group of red-blooded American boys would have done under the same dire set of circumstances: We ran like terrified rabbits out the front door of the store to get away from the scene of the crime as expeditiously as possible…..
Now, granted, it doesn’t take a lot of high-tech, professional sleuthing to figure out what transpired after that. The owner of the local mercantile in question had witnessed a small gathering of prepubescent boys guiltily huddled around a vending machine in the front of his store, and then a few minutes later they mischievously sprinted away en masse as though someone had approached them wearing a hideous mask while brandishing a blood-smeared sword. A cursory inspection of his now-disabled vending machine instantly revealed the reason for their speedy departure.
Well—long story short—in most small communities in southeastern Minnesota, then as well as now, everybody knows everybody else, and the proprietor of the store had recognized one of the boys in our party as we were milling around in the front of his business. He had contacted that boy—or more likely the boy’s parents—and pursuantly the accused boy, probably scared to death and not wanting to take a giant fall all by himself (And who can really blame him?), quickly ratted out each of his co-conspirators in this mini-heist which never bore any substantial fruit worth bragging about.
Next it couldn’t have been a matter of more than a few hours before Mom received an urgent phone call at our primitive hacienda on County Road #1 north of Spring Valley, and when she hung up the telephone and thereupon came looking for me with a frighteningly chagrined look on her face which suggested thoughts of prolonged torture followed by eventual murder……I knew instantly that my proverbial “goose was cooked”.
Let me assure you, the tempestuous, long-ago incident I just described in detail hatched inside of me one of the finest lessons in honesty that I have learned in my entire lifetime, this despite the fact the object(s) in question that was the cause of all the commotion was worth literally one penny. I will never forget the sadness in my mother’s eyes that afternoon—a look of pure, unadulterated disappointment reflecting the sobering reality that one of her sons had attempted to commit larceny, however teensy—and I felt as ashamed and embarrassed as anyone who has ever walked the face of the Earth.
And, truth be told, I don’t even remember if Mom raised her voice one decibel when she lectured me about honesty and the importance of living a godly life that seminal afternoon, because she really didn’t have to utter a single word; I had learned an invaluable, transcendent truth about going out and earning what you wanted in life as opposed to lazily stealing it from someone else the moment I saw that pained, crestfallen expression on my birth fount’s face.
So when my middle-aged mother looked me straight in the eye at the conclusion of her vituperative harangue and demanded in an uncompromising tone, “Fred, can you promise me that you’ll never steal from anyone else again in the future?”, my response was as immediate as it was heartfelt.
“Yes, Mom, I can promise you that……”
Fred's Soapbox 