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The ghetto of Evansville, Indiana is always going to be a scary place, especially in the wee hours of the morning. I was working at a Stop and Go convenience store in this less than salubrious part of town. I would say that around 70% of our customers were packing a gun. I arrive at this conclusion from the simple fact that these customers took great pride in packing their piece and never missed an opportunity to show us, the staff, how big their barrel was.

There was a disco/nightclub across the street from the store. Closing time for the disco was 3am. That's when we would get most of our trouble, but trouble certainly wasn't limited to that bewitching hour.

On one occasion, I was standing behind the cash register when this guy came in. He strolled over to the aisle of tinned sardines which was directly in front of me. He opened up his coat and just started stuffing tins of sardines into his coat. As I stared at him contemplating my next move, he opened up the other side of his coat to show me the .45 caliber pistol strapped to his side.

"You got a problem with this?" he asked.

"No, you're cool" I uttered.

After loading up about 20 tins of sardines, he left. I didn't bother to call the police because a couple of months earlier, someone came into the store, walked straight up to the counter, and swiped a huge jar of pickled pigs feet in full view of us staff of three. We called the police and when they arrived, they about killed themselves with laughter over the crime. They finally told us they had no chance of finding the thief because the sniffer dog was not available that night.

Every couple of months there would be a shoot out in our parking lot. Sometimes two guys would be arguing over gas in our forecourt and next thing you know - bang. Or the drunks would be coming out of the disco and for whatever reason; women, drugs or whatever - bang. The worst shootouts were when people from the disco would shoot at people who have run into our parking lot. I've seen a few guys shot but no one was ever killed. Not while I was there anyway.

When the shooting started, we always took cover and called the cops. Although the police station was not very far away, they would take about 20 minutes to show up. We finally figured that the cops would wait for the shooting to stop before making an appearance. And when I think about it, the people who were shooting and being shot at, would not be classed as upstanding pillars of the community. So the police were quite happy to let

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