Snapshots: Burkie In Your Pocket

there are a number of characters that haven't had any snapshots, yet.  one of them is yours truly.  i'm gonna tell you a story about my criminal past.

wait, burkie had a criminal past?!  i know, you're shocked.  or disappointed.  or possibly impressed.

it all started during my second year of college, either fall of 1981 or spring of 1982.  i know it was then because i remember my roommate and me in our apartment on riverside drive in austin, honing the craft of our new career.

let me tell you a little about my roommate, roy (his middle name was dale and i suspected that he was named after roy rogers & dale evans, though he always denied it).  roy was one those guys who always wanted to be an accountant.  actually, he always wanted a nice salary but decided early on that majoring in accounting was the best way to pursue that goal.  i'll tell you this, roy needed the money.  he had the worst car ever.  it was a 2-door chevy vega hatchback.  the vega, if you're not familiar with that model, was a crappy car at best.

and roy's vega?  it was never at best.  i can't tell you how many times we'd have to push it down the street to build up enough speed so that one of us could jump into the driver's seat, put it in gear, and pop the clutch in order to get the engine started (does anybody do this anymore?).  there were also times when that didn't work and we needed to get his car home, but he couldn't afford to have it towed.  at those times, we'd call another friend of ours to come help us do a 3-man tow job.  i guess i shouldn't say tow, since we actually pushed the car home.  here's how it worked: roy would be in the driver's seat of his vega, and i would drive up behind him in my plymouth gold duster (unlike the vega, the gold duster was a fantastic car) and stop about a foot short.  then our other friend had the unenviable job of sitting on the hood of my car and placing his feet on roy's car.  i would then start driving and, using the third guy's feet (because bumper-to-bumper action could damage both cars), roy's car would be pushed along in front of me and roy would steer us home.  once there, he'd spend a couple of days banging on it and, eventually, through sheer doggedness and a little baling wire and duct tape (he regularly used these items in his automotive repair activities, i kid you not), he'd get that ridiculous car running again for a little while.  (later that year,  roy would finally give up and have the vega committed to a scrap heap.  god love him, he went and purchased an even more pathetic vehicle, the plymouth arrow pickup truck).

that was roy's situation.  what you need to understand about my situation at that time is that i was changing my major every semester without any clue as to what i wanted to do when i grew up.  never did.  not sure i do now, come to that.

so, one night, we watched a movie on TV called Harry In Your Pocket.  you've probably never heard of this movie; it wasn't that popular.  roy and i, however, were greatly inspired.  you see, Harry In Your Pocket was a movie about pickpockets.  it taught you how to do it, and how to work as a team when picking pockets.  it was so cool, and it starred james coburn, who was like the living embodiment of cool.  we realized that by becoming professional pickpockets, roy would have plenty of money; i would have a career; and we'd both be cool (which, i confess, neither of us were regularly accused of being.  maybe one day i'll tell you the story of our failed attempt to try marijuana).

we started that night.  we each put on a jacket, placed our wallets in the inside pocket, and started practicing.  we'd walk toward each other, accidentally bump, and one of us would try to steal the other's wallet.  then, we'd place the wallet in the back pocket of our jeans (not the pocket holding the Skoal, of course) and practice lifting it from there without the other realizing it.  most fun of all, we'd each carry a newspaper.  the one who picked the wallet would place it inside the fold of his newspaper and then, walking by the other, nonchalantly slide the wallet from his newspaper to the other's newspaper.  that way, you see, the one who had just picked the pocket is no longer holding the evidence in case the victim realizes he's just been robbed and sends a cop after the guy who bumped into him.  cool, no?

well, when james coburn does it, it's really cool.  when it's two college guys spending their friday and saturday nights doing this because they don't know how to get high and they don't have girlfriends, it's just...sad.  fortunately, we were terrible at it.  the newspaper trick, we could manage that, but a dead man would know we were trying to pick his pocket.  roy would never be able to steal enough even to buy another retread tire (and he bought a lot of them), and my career as a pickpocket would have been even shorter than my career as a door-to-door bible salesman.  instead, roy started painting people's houses after class and on the weekends, and i got a part-time job at the frame shop in the mall.

i haven't seen roy in decades.  i hope he's well.  and not in jail.