Teens Steal Food Off Neighbor’s Grill

“Drew" was friends with the “Jerry,” the son of a well-known crime boss. When Drew and a few friends stayed at Jerry’s house, they decided to pull a caper of their own. Naughty? Read and decide.

When I was a freshman in college a group of us spent Spring Break at a classmate’s home in Minnetonka. There were probably six of us staying at the friend’s house.

My friend from Minnetonka, “Jerry,” was an interesting cat. He was clean-cut and preppy. His father, however, was another story. His father was a notorious underworld figure in Minneapolis. If there was gambling or drugs involved, my friend’s father probably had a hand in it.

Few of us had ever met Jerry’s father, but we’d read about him in the papers. And we’d talked about him when Jerry wasn’t around. We couldn’t help talking about him. He was larger than life.

During our five days at Jerry’s house, we not only met Jerry’s father, but we got to know him. Behind the high brick walls, and inside the motion-sensor alarms that ringed their home, we saw nothing of the crime boss. Instead, we got a look at a loving father and attentive husband.

The rest of the world, including their neighbors, never got to see this side to Jerry’s dad. The neighbors, I had heard from Jerry, were a bit tentative around his family, unsure of how to behave in front of the relatives of such an accomplished criminal.

On our evening at Jerry’s house, three of us sat around drinking beer. We quipped that Jerry and his family could probably do whatever they wanted around the neighborhood and no one would complain. They could play music as loudly as they wanted. They could drive on the sidewalk. Their dog could shit in whichever yard it wanted.

Jerry’s family had never tested the neighbors, but we decided we would.

A half-hour earlier, we had seen a neighbor fire up his grill and set out a bounty of food: corn, steaks, chicken… And now we could smell it.

A beer or two later, the instigator of our group proposed that we sneak over to the grill and steal the food. After several hours of drinking, we all thought this was a great idea.

The three of us finished our beers, grabbed another for the mission, and skulked over to the neighbor’s house. Taking the food was too easy. The neighbor had disappeared inside and we simply grabbed the steak and chicken off the grill and bolted.

“Dinner’s served!” one of us yelled.

“Anybody want a wing?” someone cried.

We ran behind someone’s house and devoured all the food in our hands. Then, well-fed and quite pleased with our heist, we returned to Jerry’s house. We drank some more, and we spoke nothing of the meal we had eaten.

Close to Midnight, Jerry disappeared. An hour later, he returned, looking pale and nervous.

“Hey, which one of you took the food off the neighbor’s grill?” he asked.

No one spoke.

“I know one of you did it,” he said. “I don’t care who it is, but you’ve caused trouble for my father. Our neighbor came over and told us that he saw a couple of guys running off his property.”

The three of us owned up to the caper. Suddenly, it didn’t seem like such a good idea. We were afraid of getting whacked.

Jerry saw the concern on our faces.

“My father gave the guy money to cover the food,” he stated. “I want you guys to give me some cash to pay my father, OK?”

The three of us nodded. We didn’t want to owe Jerry’s father. We walked a mile to the nearest ATM – soberly – withdrew cash, and forked it over to Jerry.

We had tested Jerry’s neighbors and discovered, to our surprise, that they had more balls than we thought they did.