Salt, Sugar Black Markets

When I was in 5th Grade, we had a family member who owned a tobacco and candy wholesale company. It was my job to run the little machine that put the tax stamps on the cigarettes. But I digress.

He sold me a couple of cases at cost and I would sell them at school.

Because we had an unusually small 5th grade class that year, we were consolidated into the junior high school with the 6-8th graders. I cut up cardboard boxes and made shelves in my locker so it could hold about dozen kinds of candy. I would stash my books and my coat in an old, unused closet next to the art room and just use my locker for candy.

I made around 70 or 80 dollars a week, which, for a 5th grader in 1977 was an insane amount of money.

We had a guy who was kind of like a guidance counsellor and he finally busted me. But I never got in trouble and I always got good grades and so he looked the other way when I explained to him that the whole point of going to school was to teach me how to work in the real world. What was the point of teaching us all these things and then not allowing us to use them, I asked him. He thought that was funny and so he let me slide.

I kept that up until about halfway into the next school year, when I finally got caught.

Anyway, my point, and I do have one, is good for them for not letting the system stop them.

Stick it to the man, kids!