

“This woman doesn’t miss a beat, she unzips Maynard’s jeans, hikes up her skirt, climbs right on him, starts to ride.
#Own thunder bay keep drive spinning full
Who wants a garbage bag full of dirty old clothes? Maynard had this idea of opening a storefront, a daylight-hours only pop-up operation in one of the many abandoned retail units in downtown Thunder Bay, post a lookout on the street, but his plan was to supplement our stolen goods with the junk you find in charity donation bins, and charge full price for everything, so that didn’t go too far. But you can only sell so many pairs of brand-name hockey gloves or goalie pads in the middle of summer. We stole gas from a construction site, the foreman even gave us hard hats each morning, no questions asked as we filled the truck and a few jerry cans for the road.

It was hard to keep our operation financed, when I had to pay premium insurance on the truck as a new driver. The larger problem was, just when we’d get a little money set aside, Maynard would go out on a bender, drop $100 in quarters at a strip club. Every once in a while, Maynard would backslide, and steal an air freshener for my truck, or a tin of cat food, even though he didn’t have a cat. We spent two months stealing everything of any value that we could get our hands on. We even stole a cheese wheel from an Italian restaurant, drove it across town, and sold it to another Italian restaurant, before taking a case of wine from them, and selling it back to the first restaurant! It was exhilarating, empowering, the sense that we could do whatever we wanted, we weren’t trapped like welfare rats by our circumstances. We stole wristwatches, bracelets, earrings, pirate skull rings, pornography. We stole maple syrup, licorice all-sorts, boxes of chocolate bars, batteries, spray paint. We stole blue jeans, running shoes, work boots, high-end lingerie, men’s long underwear, swimsuits. We stole diapers, baby formula, laundry detergent. We stole perfume, nail polish, lipstick, hair spray, face cream, contact lens solution.

We stole liquor, cigarettes, cough syrup, men’s razor blades, condoms, pregnancy tests. So we began stealing right after dinner that night, and there was no messing around with dollar-store inventory: no sports socks, no key chains, no ramen noodles or rice cakes. How he never thought he’d eventually get caught, I don’t know, but his amorality fascinated me. Which was a clever scheme for Maynard, but not such a great deal for the video arcade, almost running the long-successful business into the ground, until Maynard got fired for short-changing the bank by depositing coin rolls padded with nickels.
#Own thunder bay keep drive spinning free
Within a month of getting the job, the arcade was empty all day, closing at midnight each night, at which hour Maynard would switch off the lights, unlock the front door, and charge each kid waiting in the line-up $2 cash to play unlimited games on the free toggle. Then there was the winter Maynard spent managing a video arcade in Wawa, Ontario. Maynard only got caught because he cleaned out the entire route two days before the regular service guy was scheduled to pick up the money. Then there was the summer Maynard spent driving from Espanola to Kenora each weekend, ripping off the cash from every videogame and vending machine north of Lake Superior because he lifted the coin box key from the vending machine company. Grade Eight Graduation is a big day on Manitoulin Island.
