The BART Caper
The BART is the subway in San Francisco, California. It travels to Millbrae in the South of the Peninsula; across the bay to Oakland, south to Fremont in the East Bay and north all the way to Concord.
There are many BART stations around the Downtown area of San Francisco.
I have mentioned in some of my stories about traveling from Florida to California in the early part of 1975. For you new comers to my Blog this was my family's first time in San Francisco, so we were getting to know the city and while I was just a young thirteen year old girl and my family was poor and living on Welfare at the time; the only way to get cash money to ride the bus or train or the BART we had to look for change lost on the streets.
Welfare paid for the rent and electric but nothing more. Food and only food was bought with food coupons. Back in the Seventies food coupons came in a booklet like a ticket book and each coupon had a dollar amount such as a one, a five a ten or twenty. Anything that was taxable could not be purchased. Soda, beer, laundry detergent, all taxable. we could only buy edible non-taxable food.
My brother, Doug liked to con people to get money and he was trying to teach me his trade. I was a good girl and I was not going to do bad things and get into trouble because I knew better.
We hadn't been in San Francisco long and we walked everywhere. We didn't have a telephone. Everywhere we moved to we never had a telephone.
Doug and I hung out together for no other reason than company.
Doug was fearless and when we went places together he had ideas about finding ways to get money.
One idea was to beg adults for change for the telephone so that he could call our mother to come and pick us up. Another thing our mother didn't have was a car. Nor did she know how to drive.
Doug was fifteen and always expected me to follow his lead.
One day we walked down to the BART station together. Doug wanted me to try begging for a dime for the telephone. I said, "No I can't do that. It's wrong. It's a lie." We needed money but one dime was nothing. He said keep asking a lot of people and most of them will give you money out of pity.
I stood far back away just far enough to watch him in play. H asked women for a dime to call his mother to come pick him up. Each time he got a dime he would go over to the pay telephone to pretend to make the call. When the woman was out of sight he put the dime in his pocket; then he would keep asking other people for money for a few more times and this was a way he was becoming a con man.
I tried it once and was afraid and felt guilty. It worked but I didn't do it again. I did not ask for money anymore, but one day when I was alone at the BART station I did something more daring than begging.
I knew there were lockers at the bus stations that people used to store some of their belongings in. They used quarters to put into the coin slot to pay to get the key to use later to retrieve their belongings.
Since I knew about the lockers in the bus station I decided to head to the BART to the lockers there to possibly find a quarter of two because sometimes they get stuck in the coin slots.
This I decided to try without Doug. I was very hesitant and really felt I would get caught and I needed to be seriously careful and watch my back. I already learned long ago how to be extra sneaky quiet and not seen from my experience in my earlier years of my childhood. (Thanks to my evil mother.)
I spotted the lockers and slowly began checking the slots for loose , stuck or dangling quarters. I made sure to glance around to see if anyone was coming or watching me.
I was bending down close to the floor when I spotted a quarter that I thought I had a chance of getting out. I had already retrieved one quarter from another locker and I almost had the second one when a sneaky man caught me off guard and yelled, "What do you think you're doing little girl?"
As I turned around, I saw that he was a very large Security Guard.
I thought to myself, "Oh no! I'm in trouble and I had to get out of it fast."
"I'm trying to get my quarter out. It got stuck.", I said. He said, " It looks like you were stealing it because I've been standing behind you watching you grabbing at it for a few minutes now." I said, "No! it is my quarter and it got stuck."
He tried to grab me and take me to the Security Guard counter. I thought to myself; I have to get away, get out of this fast. No Juvie for me.
He asked me my name. I told him Sally Smith right off the top of my head. He asked me where I lived. I said I don't know. He asked me what's my phone number. I said we don't have a phone.
As he turned his back on me to talk to the other Security Guard, I eyed the exit to the street which was directly in front of me and up the stairs.
He was immersed in conversation with the other man so I took off running like hell and made a beehive for the door; dashed up the stairs and hit the streets running my little butt off down Powell street and disappeared onto the nearest bus home.
No, I did not pay. It was easy to hop onto any bus in San Francisco at that time by way of the back door and nobody could stop me because it was so overcrowded that the bus driver never had a clue.
The Security Guard never saw me again and I never did it again.
I never told anybody in my family at that time or to my husband or children.
That was my first and last Caper told now in this Blog.
