"Breaking Dad" considering a life of crime

(701 words)

I was driving through a gritty section of rural western Pennsylvania the other day and thought, man, an enterprising meth chef could make a fortune in these parts.

Then I wondered logically if I might be just the right guy for the job.

I don’t think many people would be surprised if it turned out I had a criminal sideline. It would help explain my frequent “working” vacations, ample free time and ability to coast through life with no visible means of support.

I wondered how my wife would react if she found out I’d gone into cooking meth to make ends meet.

Who am I kidding?

You and I both know she’d be overjoyed.

It would show the first real initiative I’ve taken since I announced one summer about seven years ago that I was on my own undertaking an important home improvement project.

I saw it through and today during the warmer months I can often be found napping in the comfortable hammock I screwed up between two big oaks out back. And a hammock remains one of the few things a guy can really screw up that has some recreational benefits.

Of course, me being a meth cook would have many parallels to Walter White, the star of the recently-concluded AMC show, “Breaking Bad.”

You remember it. Walter, like me, was 50, struggling with his obligations, family discontent and chronic illness. The only difference is Walter was susceptible to cancer relapses and I’m susceptible to Saturday hangovers.

But in the end -- SPOILER ALERT! -- it all worked out fine. Walter made a fortune selling meth, fell back in love with his wife and with Jesse Pinkman opened a faith-healer church where together they revived the bullet-riddled bodies of Hank and Gomie and everyone lived happily ever after. Well, everyone except Lidia.

At least I think that’s what happened. I might have been tripping on a meth bender during the finale.

But Walter is a true inspiration, I’m sure, to many middle-aged men more nervy than me.

They see with just a little risk how much money there is to be made. So desperate men and many women, too, sit there and think, “If I play my cards right I can make a fortune leading a life of crime.”

No one in history has ever said that about a life of blogging.

But meth kingpin would be difficult for me because I’m uncomfortable with confrontation and confrontation is what guys like Tuco and the rest of the creepy Salamanca boys are all about.

White collar crime seems suitable until I realize it probably involves more math than meth and I only have one white collar shirt.

I wish I had the skill set to be a gentleman jewel thief. It has an appealing Robin Hood element to the crime: me stealing from the rich and giving to the poor (and that again would be mostly me).

My favorite criminals of all time are probably Henry Gondorff and Johnny Hooker. They were the dapper Paul Newman/Robert Redford characters from the great 1973 movie, “The Sting.”

The movie features maybe a dozen great cons against people who mostly had it coming, especially mob boss Doyle Lonegan, as played by Robert Shaw.

There were crooked card games, heists, switcheroos, wire fraud, faked horse race results, and in the end a massive con so cleverly executed that the mark never even knew he’d been had. It’s beautiful.

I saw it when I was 10 and remember thinking even then, wow, that sure looks like a great way to make a living. You spend all your time in bars and pool halls scheming with your buddies and, then, in the end you get the great big score.

I guess I’ve lived up to the first half of that, persevering as I have through what even I often consider a life of crime minus all the crime.

It’s a shame that one big score remains so elusive.

Somedays that really stings.

So I hereby promise I’ll initiate the necessary career alterations if one day it seems like it’s never going to pay off or the instant it simply stops being so much fun.

Related . . .

How I became a PROSEtitute

Too self-deprecatory? Me? Here’s why

A “Breaking Bad” intervention

Keep me safe! Touch my junk!

In “The Sting,” the outstanding Paul Newman/Robert Redford 1973 film, Redford and a crafty old con man target a mob numbers runner for larcenous deception.

The old man and another insider stage a knife fight to lure the eager mark into taking the loot.

During a clever swap, Redford’s Johnny Hooker tells the mark to put the money way down the front of his pants to avoid detection.

“The toughest guy in the world won’t frisk you there,” Hooker says.

I was thinking of that scene the other day as I stood, legs spread, in the security vortex at Greater Pittsburgh Airport.

The TSA agent didn’t look like the toughest guy in the world. In fact, I figured I could have kicked his butt had I been indifferent to spending the next five to 10 years in a federal penitentiary.

He had a job to do. I doubt he sprung of bed each day all chipper and thinking, “Man! I’m the luckiest guy in the world! Today I get to run my hands all over nearly 300 sullen strangers! Yippee!”

He sure didn’t look happy about getting what I guess you can call “frisky” with me.

My arms were spread and I’m sure to the lady operating the full body scanner I resembled the Leonardo da Vinci sketch of the naked Renaissance man, only one with a modern middle age paunch.

He did the arms, the chest, then knelt down to my ankles and started working his way north with a series of squeezes what in other circumstances could have been called affectionate.

 “Okay, now I’m going to come clear up to the bottom of the torso.”

I’d never heard it called that before. It’s a perfectly bureaucratic phrase. I’m sure the rest of us civilians can instinctively come up with one or two mono-syllabic words to describe the region he was duty bound to secure.

Did I feel violated? No.

Did I want express outrage? No, but I did make a mental note to place an industrial-sized whoopee cushion near the bottom of my torso next time I fly.

And the worst way to travel somehow manages to make itself even more irksome and degrading.

Few people remember but one of the biggest stories of the summer of 2001 was the push to pass an airline passenger bill of rights.

Why, passengers were tired of being treated so rudely. We’d had it up to the tops of our torsos with such shabby treatment.

Remember what bumped that story off the front pages?

Sure you do. After the terrors of 9/11 we were all willing to submit to any indignity that would ensure our planes were safe.

I guess the hyperbolic outrage over these invasive pat downs is a sign of how complacent we’ve become.

What’s amazing to me is there has been actual attempted bombings that involve every invasive security measure that have us literally so up in arms.

We had a shoe bomber so we all had to shuck their shoes.

We had a bomber with explosives in his underwear -- and you’d think there’s a dandy pick-up line in there somewhere -- so now we’re getting grabbed in places once reserved for intimates.

No one can argue the whole system isn’t utterly insane and wasteful. In 10 years, we’ve had fewer than a dozen young men of Middle Eastern descent try to board planes with bombs, yet every single passenger from toddlers to grannies is suspect.

I take a back seat to know one in regard to civil liberties, but the current system makes no sense. Yet, who’s to argue it’s not working?

For me an even more egregious incident than the invasive pat down happened on the way home.

I was given bottle of fine cabernet and thought it would be safer if I returned it home in my carryon, rather than risk getting it smashed by the gorillas in baggage handling.

It was corked and waxed. I would need banned weapons and a good reason to celebrate to open the thing in flight.

Never occurred to me it was a liquid and thus eligible for confiscation. They told me I could go back and check it, but I didn’t need add yet another layer of hassle to my trip.

I said cheers, boys. This one’s on me.

So you know what I’m going to do?

I think I’m going to spend the day searching the internet for a Patrick or a Patricia Downs to ask them if they’re invasive by nature or upset that people are hating all these pat downs.

I’ll let you know if anything comes of it.