Doug Blough

I continue to scan Billings Gazette headlines so YOU don't have to and saw this nugget: ”Cha-ching! Millions of Dimes Spill onto Texas Highway After Truck Rolls.”

The semi was carrying $800,000 worth of dimes that spilled out. Can you imagine being the first on the scene and making off with as much as you could carry, (after making sure the driver wasn't hurt of course)? You'd be running off with every pocket bulging conspicuously., which brings to mind an epic heist I was involved in some 54 years ago.

This was back before I was convinced stealing was wrong, and my best friend Donnie Eash and I had mischievous sticky fingers. I was 16 and we seniors had just gotten out of school after an assembly showing those horrific automobile accident films meant to prevent prom night careless driving. So I'm driving Dad's Plymouth Valiant through Jerome, Pennsylvania, with Eash, Sam Rullo and Larry Grandas, and going up a winding hill and chattering away, I nearly hit a car head-on. My buddies were screaming, “Geez Doug; we just watched those bloody movies and you're already trying to get us killed!”

We were on our way to Four Seasons Recreation Center in nearby Jennerstown, which had miniature golf, driving range, pinball and batting machines and pool tables. Eash and I were addicted to pinball, so as Rullo and Grandas shot pool upstairs, we went downstairs to play pinball. After feeding endless quarters into those gluttonous machines while neither of us could afford that kind of output. I'm not sure which of us said, “We ought to pry that thing open and get our money back.” I'd like to think it was Eash's idea.

But one or the other grabbed the fireplace poker and wedged and pried until that little door flew open with a resounding “CRACK” was heard you'd think by everyone including the upstairs attendants. Shockingly, it remained just me and Eash in that room and like a couple of packrats we began filling our pockets with nickles, dimes and quarters. We got our money back and a whole bunch more. Oh, the bell-bottoms were sagging low, my friends.

We ran up that long staircase like we were on fire and Grandas and Rullo said they could hear us jingling with every step. We urged them to call off their pool game as we high-tailed it to the Valiant. As Rullo and Grandas told us how crazy we were, I still remember saying “This is just the beginning!” The more sensible Eash shot back “BS Doug, this is the end for me!”

The only glitch was that the Four Seasons painted all their coins in red, yellow and blue, so spending our reward promised considerable risk. Thankfully my Dad was oblivious to stupid questions and after I asked him the easiest way to get paint off of metal, he didn't even ask why I wanted to know, suggesting, if I remember correctly, turpentine. I then asked where he keeps such a thing, and he aided and abetted by pointing me to his tool room. I had never painted in my life and avoided anything resembling work at all costs, so you'd think he'd have been inquisitive.

Mom was equally oblivious to my sneakiness and when she came into my room to say supper was ready, she never opined about the coins covering my bed, rags or pungent odor in the air. Eash was doing the same thing at his house and soon we were spending them squeaky-clean coins at pinball machines all over Somerset County. Sharing the wealth with other needy establishments one might say.

I'm not proud of my artful thievery in those days, and it's now difficult to fathom since today if the newspaper machine malfunctions and I get a free paper, I'm still compelled to drop my money into the slot. It's a cleaning rags-to-riches, sinner-to-saint tale if you will. I later demolished Dad's Valiant by the way. Now THAT he was immediately curious about!