CSI - Cash boys style

I'm here to tell you guys I'm the wrong one telling these Cash boys stories. Every time I talk to one of my brothers they bring up something that happened that I have completely forgotten about. It may also be an indication of my failing memory, who knows?

Talked to Holden today and he remembered a really, really funny story about when we worked at Bill's 66 Gas Station. It eventually involved almost everybody in the community...every man, anyway.

It was during the school year and I was driving So it would have been one of two years that Holden and I both worked there with our driver's license. Holden was a senior and I was a second year sophomore (no giggling, please). Cole, my oldest brother, would open the station up early for Bill. Holden had earned a 'half schedule' at school and got out at noon to go to work. He ran the place all afternoon and I would pick it up after four and work until about eight. That was really the lousy shift because by four in the afternoon Bill had sobered up enough to drive to the liquor store and then make it to the station. I usually ran the drive while Bill sat in his office and finished off the first pint of the day. Bill was not a good drunk and my brothers always left me with a couple of flats to fix. I not only had to pump gas and fix flats, I also had to endure Bill's critique of how I was doing it wrong. Oh well, such was my world.

And as this schedule went, I never saw Cole much. I would see Holden when I got there and he would relay any message Cole might have for me. One day he had a serious message for me from our oldest brother, "Cole said quit stealing toilet paper out of the back, Bill's starting to notice it's missing."

I hadn't been stealing any toilet paper and told Holden. He said he hadn't taken any either. We were both bewildered about the missing butt-wipe. Oh well, somebody else's problem.

The next day I get to the station and Cole's Oldsmobile 88 was there. As soon as I got there he took me aside and questioned me about the TP. Once again I claimed my innocence. Cole was a little perturbed. In his mind it wasn't him, It wasn't Bill, so it had to be either Holden or me. He didn't care which, just "knock it off" or there would be some ass getting kicked. I needed to talk to Holden. We needed to clear our names...AND figure out who was pinching on the butt-wipe.

Holden and I had a sit down the next day at the station and compared notes. The cheap toilet paper that Bill kept around came in single rolls, wrapped in a waxy tissue paper and were stuffed in huge cardboard boxes of 144 rolls. This box was kept high on a shelf in the storeroom that was in the back of the garage bays. It was our habit to occasionally climb up the shelves and throw a dozen rolls down to be kept on a lower shelf. This MUST be where the theft was occurring. We tried to narrow down our suspects. There were probably three or four regular delivery men that went back there, sometimes when Holden or I was busy pumping gas in the front. It had to be one of them.

The Coca-Cola guy didn't seem like a suspect though. Even though the crates of single pops and empties were kept back there, he always counted the empties in front of one of us. Probably wasn't him. That left the tire salesman, the guy from the parts store that kept our fan belt and radiator hoses stocked and the guy that owned the penny peanut dispensers and the cigarette machine. We needed to figure out how to tell which one of these guys it was...or Cole was going probably kick our butts "just cause". After a day or two Holden came up with a fantastic plan.

Hank Harkey was one of the boys from the 'hood that had been to Viet Nam and made it back. Holden was friends with Hank's brother Steve. Steve was in possession of some fantastic magic itching powder Hank had brought back from SE Asia. And it reportedly worked too well. It was made from the pods of a bean called "Benguk" or "Mu-Mui". The story was that watchful Vietnamese fathers of young women would plant these beans around the windows of their daughters to "see" if there was any after hours hanky-panky going on. Holden was able to procure a good amount for the paltry sum of a couple of free tanks of gas in Steve's car (thank you Bill, you never missed it). We had a plan.

Holden and I carefully opened the ends of a half dozen rolls of TP and sprinkled the ends with the Benguk powder, being careful not to get any on us. We stocked the restrooms with three or four untainted rolls and left the "marks" on the shelf where they had been disappearing. We pinky swore to keep the secret and waited for the thief to get his "payback".

I came in to work a few days later and Holden looked confused. Seems as though the local prowl cop had come in for a soda pop that morning and was doing some serious ass scratching. And to top that, an older gent that went to our church came in for gas and he too was having some serious back side problems. Neither one of those guys were on our "suspect" list. And then it got worse...

Within a day or two there must have been a dozen men insanely scratching their butts. Holden had even seen the HS wrestling coach at school digging at his backside. We affirmed our "secret" to each other and waited for the melee to work itself out. We started sweating when we found out one of the afflicted men's wife had called Mama Cash to find out if Pops was "infected" (thank God he wasn't). Someone had been to the doctor and there was talk of an outbreak of some serious "butt bug" making the rounds. Holden and I had unwittingly unleashed a pox on the community.

One evening at dinner I casually brought up the subject to see if we could glean any intel on the matter. I asked if anybody ever found out why everybody was scratching their butts. Momma hushed me for talking "out of turn" at the dinner table. Pops didn't even look up from the Sports page of the evening paper. All he said was, "They're all part of the "Order of Bucks".

Flash! Holden and I had a clue! The Secret Order of Bucks (or S.O.B.s for short) was a small fraternal organization of local gents that met weekly. Their "enclave" was a concrete block building nearby that had been part of a church's community center. The church had burned down and was now a car lot. The little block "community center" sat at the back of the lot and housed the car lot's office AND was the weekly meeting spot for the S.O.B.s. We needed to let Cole in on our dilemma.

Once we had spelled out our deed to Cole he was surprisingly understanding. And with a little info input from him we figured it all out. The guy that serviced the candy and cigarette machines at the station was an SOB. Cole knew enough of their inner workings to know they regularly rotated janitor chores among the members. One of the duties was to provide toilet paper for the bathroom. We figured our candy machine guy had pulled janitor duty and was pinching the supplies from Bill's back room. The one "outlier" was the local cop. Cole set us straight about that. The cop usually worked the graveyard shift. Apparently known only to a few was the location of the "key under the mat" for the restroom and late at night the cop could have access to the bathroom at the enclave when everything else was closed.

We solved our mystery of the missing butt-wipe and Cole promised to tell Bill it wasn't either of us. He must have..because after that Bill kept his own roll locked up in his desk at the station. When he had to go he would take his own roll into the bathroom and bring it back out and lock it back up in his desk.

And never said a thing about it to Holden or me...;)