Mimi’s Corner: The Five and Dime

Oh, yes, this is another recollection from my youth. You can stop reading if you wish, but you’ll miss how I singlehandedly broke up a gang of thieves that was plundering goods on a regular basis—in broad daylight, no less! I could have been killed!

Not really. The dirty scoundrels never knew who dropped a dime on ‘em.

First, we need a little backstory. In the 1960s, my uncle Erwin was the manager of a Woolworth’s store in Dayton. For those of you who have never had the Woolworth experience, it was a worldwide chain of “five and dime” stores, where most items were sold for 5 or 10 cents. They were the original chain stores. As prices rose, they became “dime stores” instead.

The merchandise was mainly low-cost items: some clothing, toiletries, sewing notions, stationery, toys, and other home supplies. Five and dimes were a precursor to the current “dollar store” phenomenon but without groceries. Off the top of my head, in this part of Ohio, we had Woolworth’s, Kresge’s (which morphed into K-Mart), McCrory’s, Murphy’s, and Ben Franklin. There are still some Ben Franklin stores scattered around the country, mostly in the form of craft and sewing supply stores.

Anyway, back to my Elliot Ness days! After high school, I took a typing and speed-writing class in the mornings in downtown Dayton at Miami-Jacobs Junior College of Business, which was later absorbed into Sinclair Community College. In the afternoons and on Saturdays, I worked at Woolworth’s.

This store was in Forest Park Plaza, a shopping center built on the land that was once Frankie’s Forest Park, an amusement park with a zoo and a race track. We lived about a mile from there, and I would walk to work, and my dad would pick me up at closing time, 9:00 p.m.

One of my co-workers was a young woman of a rather sleazy persuasion—let’s call her Martha— who worked as a cashier in the checkout lanes. I worked at the candy counter, right behind the checkout area. I noticed that she had sketchy-looking male friends who shopped in the store often, filling their cart with a variety of merchandise, record albums, blankets, pillows, and all sorts of things, but always checking out at her register. Full carts were unusual in dime stores, and most shoppers would only pop in for a few items.

One day, I paid close attention to their shopping cart and made a note of the items therein. There were no bar codes and price scanners in those days. Each item’s price had to be entered manually into the cash register by the cashier. I could see the back of the cash register from my “stakeout point” at the candy counter, so I could see the amounts that Martha rang up on each item, as well as the total sale.

The totals for these items should have been way more than what was showing on the register as the total. I kept track of my estimated total and decided to be a ratfink and squeal on her to my boss. Dang it.

Martha was fired the next day, and I couldn’t help feeling bad for her. I had always thought that she was using drugs. She looked like it: she was my age,18, but looked at least ten years older and always seemed tired, sad, sick, and depressed. And I had just made it worse for her. Talk about mixed feelings!

Sometimes, doing the right thing feels like you’re doing the wrong thing. Have you had any experiences like this? If so, tell me about them at sam@tippgazette.com.