Thinking Big When It Comes to Stealing
Joe Loya’s “Keating and Me” (Opinion, Aug. 4) brought back memories of Mike, a neighbor of ours in my parents’ working-class Chicago neighborhood.
Before Mike became an accomplished, hard-working electrician he did some hard time for armed robbery. One day he asked if I’d like to meet some of his friends. We parked the car in an alley on the Near West Side, entered a garage that housed only a large, round oak table lit by a single bulb peeking out of a green glass shade. Five or six men were playing poker. It was as if I had stepped into an Edward Hopper painting.
On the trip back to our apartment building, Mike advised me to stay away from losers, saying: “Kid, crime doesn’t pay. I should know. But if you’re gonna steal, steal big.”
Ben Newman
Palm Springs
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