Tall Midget wrote:
Your stepdad really supported himself by shoplifting? Damn, he really must've been prolific. Aside from his criminal occupation, did he live an otherwise conventional lifestyle? I am fascinated by people who straddle the boundary between legitimacy and illegitimacy (as socially defined).
By the way, there used to be Eagle outposts at the corner of Lincoln and Touhy in Lincolnwood and at the corner of Dempster and Menard in Morton Grove. Prior to becoming Eagles, they were Kohl's grocery stores. The Lincolnwood location is now a pretty good ethnic produce store and meat market called Lincolnwood Produce. The Morton Grove outpost has been turned into some kind of medical office.
Yeah, that's really what he did for a living. Occasionally he would take a straight job, probably mostly to satisfy my mom. But that never lasted. He worked as a paper handler for a time. I'm sure the people who bought his stolen meat considered him an arch criminal, but they were the ones buying his wares. Half-price steaks can be hard to resist for an "honest" housewife on a tight budget.
In addition to shoplifting, he was somewhat of a con man. He was the kind of guy that even after he ripped someone off, they still couldn't help but like him. It got to a point where my mother told everyone she knew not to give him any money for any schemes. Of course, people never listened and then they complained to my mom who didn't want to hear it.
When I was leaving for college he and I went to Montgomery Ward in Old Orchard to get some boxes for packing my stuff. The guy on the dock was really nice and pointed to a stack of empty boxes and told us to take what we wanted. One of the boxes my stepfather walked out with happened to have a 27" television inside of it.
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