When I was a little boy of about 9 years old, the Coca Cola bottling plant ran a promotion quite similar to what we saw with McDonald's restaurants and their infamous monopoly game. It too was subject to fraudulent action.
The game was to collect bottle caps which held the picture and name of individual Packers players on the inside of each bottle cap. There was a big sheet that you would get from local retailers with individual circles for each player on the team. You would glue the corresponding cap to the circle on the sheet until you filled it up and won the various awards dependent upon how many circles you filled.
By this time in my life I was as gangsta as a blonde haired blue eyed Beatles boot and cut little quasi juvenile delinquent from Madison could be...and I had a partner in crime, his name was David also.
David and I hatched a plan to win Bart Starr Jerseys. We collected multiple sheets and caps, hustling drinks from gas station customers at the local Parmann's Sinclair gas station by washing windshields and checking under hoods, in exchange for receiving the bottle caps from the cokes we asked them to buy in exchange for our full service at the pump. All were agreeable...the customers, the attendants that were actually supposed to do this service, and the owner- who was at least appreciative of the fact that we we busy taking care of his customers instead of stomping on and/or riding our bikes over his "bell".
So. We had multiple sheets filled mostly with these bottle caps, but there was a common theme of missing certain players...the "rare, hard to find" ones...think Pokémon charizard etc. here...Did I mention that we were quasi hoodlums?
One Saturday morning we hopped on the city bus and went to the coca cola bottling plant. We walked in like we owned that mother fucka. My friend David told the first guy that asked us what the hell we were doing there that his dad worked there and that he was showing his friend (me) what his dad did for a living. The guy decided to give us both a tour. We learned all about bottling that day, with a special emphasis on bottle caps, but we didn't tell our "guide" that part.
The "line" had a separate room for the accumulation of the bottle caps prior to being placed in the receptacles for the processors to actually place them on the bottles. Now, mind you, this was a seemingly insignificant detail in the production of coke in Madison, but to two 9 yr. Olds, it was a major security breech and opportunity for some big league fraud. We took advantage. Nor only was the room separate from the line, it also had an exit door...we filled at least 10 grocery bags full of bottle caps (even 10 bags remained quite light, we are talking bottle caps here) and walked right out that back door.
I'm not saying we were big thinkers. Just like most criminals, we forgot some details. We went ahead and used those caps to fill in our missing circles, plus started and finished several more, becoming semi regulars at the office of the bottler for redemptions...
Can you guess what made them grow weary of our redemptions?
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