All About the Author: Part Three

I’m not sure if I discovered Rock and Roll or shoplifting first. Anyway, I became passionate about both. It was right around the time that Elvis went to RCA. I still have my Elvis EP’s in picture covers. I attribute this to poor toilet training.

Around that time I got one of those new “tiny” Japanese transistor radios. It lasted me many happy years. I put it under my pillow at night and listened to Murray the K and, later on, to Cassius Clay fights.

In 1958 my father decided that we, his wife and children, were not working out as he had planned so he began traveling with his job between three and seven days a week.
Over the next ten or twelve years I lifted countless books and magazines from stores all over Queens. If I found a store with a good set up I’d go back time after time. Of course I made purchases too, maybe candy, more often a five cent newspaper with a magazine stuck in the middle. My room ended up looking like the Collier brothers’ apartment. I can’t imagine where my parents thought all of those publications came from. When I was younger I was more daring, and I lifted a wider range of products. I was never caught.