Sticky Fingers by Tom Bentley
Sticky Fingers : Confessions of a Marginally Repentant Shoplifter
Tom Bentley
Genre: Autobiography, Memoir
Published: 21 July 2022
Publisher: The Write Word Publishing
Hello. I hope this doesn't sound like a laundry list (and a soiled one at that) of me, me, me, but: I’ve run a writing and editing business out of my house for many years.
Publisher's Blurb
There’s only one thing more excited than a kid in a candy store: a kid in a candy store who can steal as much candy as he needs. The same kid later realizes that budgeting for high school is so restrictive—why not just steal all those shiny little (and big) things that caught his eye? Tom Bentley was that kid. He was a dedicated, accomplished shoplifter through his high school years, so much so that he treated it as a business, taking orders for record albums, tape recorders, clothes, liquor and all sorts of glittery little gewgaws from his peer clients, and instructing a small team of fellow five-fingerers in matters of the trade.
During the four-year period between age 15 and 19, Bentley was a lunatic thief, and became more and more brazen: He dribbled basketballs out of stores, marched out holding new briefcases as if he were a businessman, strolled out with completely unrolled sleeping bags—a model student, er, shoplifter. He stopped—temporarily—only after spending a few days in jail for stealing a bottle of Scotch. Budgeting as a high school student can be so restrictive: Bentley felt that stealing all the things he “needed” seemed to be a reasonable answer. Even after graduation.
That was Bentley's first experience running a business, and it was a successful one—with some unsuccessful consequences. Another detail: he was a Catholic altar boy from a nice, middle-class Southern California family. That didn’t seem to help with the shoplifting.
Bentley developed some intriguing shoplifting techniques and shares them here. (Caution: don't try this at home—or in any stores!) Spend some time, from the late 60s through the 70s, journeying with Tom Bentley as he goes from Southern California to Canada to central Washington to Las Vegas, pilfering all the way.
Sticky Fingers has examples of colorfully bad judgment, the cracking of the social contract, pangs of conscience, and humor—it’s lively, surprising, and fun. And mostly illegal.
During the four-year period between age 15 and 19, Bentley was a lunatic thief, and became more and more brazen: He dribbled basketballs out of stores, marched out holding new briefcases as if he were a businessman, strolled out with completely unrolled sleeping bags—a model student, er, shoplifter. He stopped—temporarily—only after spending a few days in jail for stealing a bottle of Scotch. Budgeting as a high school student can be so restrictive: Bentley felt that stealing all the things he “needed” seemed to be a reasonable answer. Even after graduation.
That was Bentley's first experience running a business, and it was a successful one—with some unsuccessful consequences. Another detail: he was a Catholic altar boy from a nice, middle-class Southern California family. That didn’t seem to help with the shoplifting.
Bentley developed some intriguing shoplifting techniques and shares them here. (Caution: don't try this at home—or in any stores!) Spend some time, from the late 60s through the 70s, journeying with Tom Bentley as he goes from Southern California to Canada to central Washington to Las Vegas, pilfering all the way.
Sticky Fingers has examples of colorfully bad judgment, the cracking of the social contract, pangs of conscience, and humor—it’s lively, surprising, and fun. And mostly illegal.
Review
Sticky Fingers – Confessions of a Marginally Repentant Shop Lifter is an autobiographical adventure story covering Tom Bentley’s late teens during the nineteen sixties and early seventies.
With a moral compass on the blink and a never ending need for candy, Tom took to using his ‘five fingered discount’ to satiate his sugar craving and very soon escalated to stealing anything he wanted or could sell to his school friends.
Bentley takes his ‘skills’ on the road and causes havoc from California, Las Vegas and Washington then across the border to Canada.
What starts with the pilfering of confectionary quickly gets more serious when he and his cronies start lifting gasoline from parked cars using a homemade pumping device and eventually to stealing carburettors.
Tom’s methods vary from the downright sneaky with hidden pockets in his jacket, to the much more brazen dribbling of a basketball out of a store.
Not deterred by a short stint in the police cells when he underestimated the observation skills of an undercover security guard, Tom embarks on a drug filled kleptomaniacal road trip with a succession of friends as he seeks to make sense of his teenage years.
Subsidising his trips with short term jobs as a mechanic on an oil refinery, an apple picker and ironically as a shop assistant Bentley regales the reader with a series of tales that both shock and entertain in equal measure.
Years later, the author realises the error of his ways during his teens and uses this platform to explain why he did what he did and to show a bit of remorse for the more serious acts he perpetrated.
Written in an easy style and with great descriptions of the times and places the Tom inhabited, this is a fun delve into the past for those of us of a certain age and a voyage of discovery for those who don’t remember the 60’s and 70’s.
Despite the seriousness of some of the author’s antics, you can’t help but get attached to him as the account of the period unfolds and it is nice to see that the repentance is real and not just there for the title by-line.
A thoroughly entertaining tale that gives a snapshot of times past, when things were very different to what they are today. As someone much more intelligent than me once said ‘The past is a foreign country’ and you wouldn’t imagine any of this to be possible in our modern era especially with CCTV, barcodes and security tags.
In summary, if this were fiction it would be a great story but with it being true it adds that extra edge that sometimes leaves the reader going ‘you did WHAT!’ For me this was a fun and entertaining biographical look at the author’s late teens and I would recommend it to anyone
With a moral compass on the blink and a never ending need for candy, Tom took to using his ‘five fingered discount’ to satiate his sugar craving and very soon escalated to stealing anything he wanted or could sell to his school friends.
Bentley takes his ‘skills’ on the road and causes havoc from California, Las Vegas and Washington then across the border to Canada.
What starts with the pilfering of confectionary quickly gets more serious when he and his cronies start lifting gasoline from parked cars using a homemade pumping device and eventually to stealing carburettors.
Tom’s methods vary from the downright sneaky with hidden pockets in his jacket, to the much more brazen dribbling of a basketball out of a store.
Not deterred by a short stint in the police cells when he underestimated the observation skills of an undercover security guard, Tom embarks on a drug filled kleptomaniacal road trip with a succession of friends as he seeks to make sense of his teenage years.
Subsidising his trips with short term jobs as a mechanic on an oil refinery, an apple picker and ironically as a shop assistant Bentley regales the reader with a series of tales that both shock and entertain in equal measure.
Years later, the author realises the error of his ways during his teens and uses this platform to explain why he did what he did and to show a bit of remorse for the more serious acts he perpetrated.
Written in an easy style and with great descriptions of the times and places the Tom inhabited, this is a fun delve into the past for those of us of a certain age and a voyage of discovery for those who don’t remember the 60’s and 70’s.
Despite the seriousness of some of the author’s antics, you can’t help but get attached to him as the account of the period unfolds and it is nice to see that the repentance is real and not just there for the title by-line.
A thoroughly entertaining tale that gives a snapshot of times past, when things were very different to what they are today. As someone much more intelligent than me once said ‘The past is a foreign country’ and you wouldn’t imagine any of this to be possible in our modern era especially with CCTV, barcodes and security tags.
In summary, if this were fiction it would be a great story but with it being true it adds that extra edge that sometimes leaves the reader going ‘you did WHAT!’ For me this was a fun and entertaining biographical look at the author’s late teens and I would recommend it to anyone
The Author
Website: https://www.tombentley.com/
Twitter : https://twitter.com/TomBentleyNow
I've published hundreds of freelance pieces—ranging from first-person essays to travel pieces to more journalistic subjects—in newspapers, magazines, and online. (Venues include Forbes, Wine Enthusiast Magazine, Writer’s Digest, Sailing Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Wired, the San Francisco Chronicle, Writer's Market and many others.)
I was the 1999 winner of the National Steinbeck Center’s short story contest, as well as a 2007 winner of the Lunch Hour Stories short story contest; I’ve also won three Traveler's Tales Solas awards and a few other nonfiction writing contests.
I like to mix my literature with the occasional cigar and shot of whiskey. Come by and say hello!
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