The Baloney Thief

You have to be really hungry to steal 20 lbs of baloney

“Frankie, you go on in there while I talk to these guys.”

My dad was leaning on his cop car, chatting up a couple cops, squinting while he smoked a cigarette he pinched between his thumb and index finger like Humphrey Bogart. He was dressed in his police uniform – dark blue pants, light blue shirt, big revolver in a holster slung low on his hips. And he was wearing sunglasses, even though it was early in the morning. He always wore sunglasses in the morning.

“Go on. You know where to go,” he said through clenched teeth as he walked behind the police cruiser and opened the trunk. He gestured with one of his massive arms. “You go ahead and put the stuff in here.”

That’s the morning I became The Baloney Thief. I was six.  

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You’d have to see jail baloney to believe it. Sure, you can buy Oscar Mayer baloney in little half-pound packs with 16 slices. But jail baloney is industrial-sized lunch meat. The ones my dad wanted me to steal were huge. Four inches in diameter and four feet long. They weighed 20 pounds.

The door my dad pointed to was at the end of a loading dock at the back of the jail. That door led into a food storeroom that had several huge refrigerators and rows of shelving for dry goods. I’d been in that storeroom many times with my dad. He would bring me along on overnight guard jobs he did at construction sites.

We’d sit all night at those sites and my dad would fall asleep almost as soon as we’d get there. He’d tell me to stay awake and let him know if anyone was out there. I was really scared. The places were dark. And I conjured brutal scenarios where my dad would get into a shootout with some guys trying to steal lumber and copper piping from the buildings he was watching.

Nothing ever happened, but to stay awake, I would eat a baloney sandwich my dad wrapped in newspaper before we went to his job for the night. I’d wait until it was very late, then I’d eat a little bit. The crust first. Another hour later, one-quarter of the sandwich. And after a couple more hours, another quarter. I would try to time my last part of the sandwich for when the sun was coming up. Then I’d wake up my dad. He’d always be grumpy. And say nasty things.

After he woke up a little, my dad would say, “Let’s go get a coffee.” And by get a coffee, he meant we would go by the jail and get a free coffee. He’d have me tag along. We’d enter through the kitchen storeroom and walk into an industrial kitchen that always felt hot and steamy. My dad would shake hands with a few of the workers in there, and every once in a while, he’d point at me and say something that the guys laughed at. He’d fill his Thermos with scalding coffee and then he’d say let’s vamoose.

On the way out, he’d say he needed to look in the refrigerator to find some milk for his coffee. Except he drank his coffee black.

After rooting around in the refrigerator, he’d take an unopened gallon of milk and walk past the dry good shelves where he’d grab a couple loaves of bread. I always wished he would take some cookies, too. He never did. But we did get crumbly cookies from what my dad called The Stale Store — it was a store that sold past-the-sale-date baked goods for pennies. When my dad wore his police uniform there everything was free. He’d take stuff off the shelves (how old does Wonder Bread have to be to be stale?) and we’d just walk out. The clerk would just nod.

So, it didn’t seem all that weird when my dad told me to go into the jail fridge and get one of those baloneys. “Get a full one,” he said. He didn’t want me to take one they already started slicing. He told me all this before he fell asleep at the construction site. I knew exactly what he wanted.

I walked into the storeroom and opened a few big doors before I found the one with rows of huge sausages in bright red casings. I pulled at the top one in the stack. It was heavy. Half my body weight, and easily as tall as me.

I tugged and pulled on the baloney. And as I yanked it, the giant red sausage plopped out on the floor. THWAP!

Three guys who worked in the kitchen came running through the swinging doors that separated the kitchen from the storeroom. I’d like to say they looked surprised. Or shocked. Or that they told me to go away. But they didn’t. They knew me from my dad.

“It’s his kid,” I heard one of them mumble.

“Help him pick it up,” another said.

One guy helped me lift the baloney up on my shoulder. The casing was stiff, so although it sagged across my shoulder, it was like carrying a fence post.

They started laughing. My legs were shaking, both with fear and with the heaviness of the baloney on my shoulder. “Thank you,” I said, as I walked out the door.

“You’re welcome, little man,” one of them replied. Then they started laughing. “Look at him go,” said the one who helped me put the sausage on my shoulder. “There goes The Baloney Thief.”

I could feel my ears get red and hot. I thought I was gonna cry. But I knew my dad would smack me if I was crying, so I just hefted the baloney and walked out the door of the jail, across the loading dock, and rolled the baloney off my shoulder into the trunk of the cop car. My dad looked over his sunglasses and made a little gesture with his head, asking me if I got what he told me to get. I nodded and then I heard my dad tell the guys he was talking to that he had to get home.

“Close the trunk,” he told me as he opened the cop car door and slid into the driver’s seat. I slammed the trunk closed, then I came around and got into the front seat of the car. No seat belts back then.

“You get it?” my dad asked.

“Yep. The big one,” I said. I was pretty happy with myself.

“Anybody see you?”

“Some guys came in. One guy helped me pick it up. They laughed. One of them called me The Baloney Thief.”

Wham! My dad punched across the seat and whacked me hard on my left ear. My head bounced off the side of the door.

“I told you to get in and get out,” my dad shouted. “Now I have to talk to those guys, dammit.” Then he gunned the engine and tore out of the jail parking lot.

When we got home, I cut the baloney into four sections so it could fit into our fridge. There wasn’t anything else in there but eggs, milk, and my mom’s 16-ounce Pepsi bottles.

“Make me some eggs and fried baloney,” my dad said as he sat down at the kitchen table. “And put the coffee on.” He took off his sunglasses and set them on the table.

How to Eat 20 Pounds of Jail Baloney

First, peel the red casing of off the baloney. Then, follow these treats courtesy of The Baloney Thief.

Breakfast

Fried baloney with soft-boiled eggs (sizzle baloney in government-issued butter)

Lunch

Fried baloney with grilled onions (that smell lingers in the house for days)

Baloney sandwich with Miracle Whip on Wonder Bread (dicey, especially when it gets warm sitting in the cloak closet at school)

Baloney sandwich with ketchup on Wonder Bread (a special treat)

Baloney sandwich with mustard on Wonder Bread (when the Miracle Whip and ketchup are gone)

Baloney rolled up in a slice of government-issued cheese (when the Wonder Bread is gone)

Dinner

Strips of fried baloney in white gravy over toast (what my dad called SOS, which means Shit on a Shingle)

Cubes of baloney with mashed potatoes (yum, chunks)

Cubes of baloney with scalded potatoes (cleaning the pan took forever because my mother burned everything)

Cubes of baloney with fried potatoes (when we didn’t have milk)

Cubes of baloney with cubes of government-issued cheese (when dad wasn’t gonna be home for dinner)