In the Good Old Days you could go into any American bar and you’d find That Guy. He was as much a fixture of the gin mill as the revolving Schlitz sign, the smoke-choked air, and the jaded bartender who’d heard it all, seen it all, and was fed up with it all.

So who was That Guy?

He was a living example of “Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda.” You know those peeps. They’re the ones who had it all going for them, were in the express lane for greatness, never did anything wrong, but never made it due to Cruel Fate.

For example, they coulda had a full-ride football scholarship to a Big Ten school, if their girlfriend hadn’t distracted them, sapped their strength, and so on.

Or they coulda been a Master Sergeant in the Special Forces, if the idiots in charge hadn’t instead assigned them to Graves Registration.

Or they coulda been a headliner in the Grand Old Opry, it wasn’t based on picking favorites rather than performers with real skill.

Of course all the “Coulda, Shoulda, Wouldas” have two things in common. One is lack of talent, the other is delusions of grandeur.

On weekends in Potsdam, back in my Glory Days at Old Siwash, my bestie Willy and I made the rounds of the bars — as most of the students did. A regular in one bar was a That Guy named Benjamin Franklin Blanchard. If his parents thought naming him after Benjamin Franklin would spur him on to greatness, they were doomed to a lifetime of disappointment. Instead of him becoming a scholar, an inventor or an esteemed leader, he became an incorrigible petty thief — and a lousy one at that.

He launched his “career” while in single digits, with penny candies. Then, in his early teens, he worked his way up to cigarettes. And finally, in adulthood, he graduated and diversified to ripping off whatever he could get his grubby meat hooks on. But one thing remained constant: He was a complete bungler who, no matter what he stole or from whom, he almost always got caught. Anyone with a marginal IQ and even a hint of common sense, would’ve quit the game early on and gotten an honest job, but not our boy. To him, being a low-level crook was a higher calling.

Gandhi wanted to lead his people and country to independence from England. Clara Barton dedicated her life to healing the sick. Ernest Shackleton was driven to great exploration and great leadership.

By contrast, Benjamin Franklin Blanchard wanted to steal stuff, any stuff, for no rhyme or reason, just because that’s who he was and that’s what he did. And because he had no imagination, he never scored anything worth a tiddly-doo. Ultimately, what distinguished him from his fellow That Guys was while they had delusions of grandeur, he had delusions of mediocrity.

Something else about his having no imagination: He never imagined himself getting caught. As a result, he darn near always got caught.

When I met him, he was in his late 20s or early 30s, though he could have passed for a 60 year-old — and not a healthy one either. In short, not only was he a burn-out, but he looked like one as well.

You might think someone who’d lived in the demimonde his whole life and had had all the offbeat experiences he’d had would be a colorful character full of fabulous stories. And if you’d thought that, you’d have though 100% wrong. He was basically as self-pitying, whiny dullard who could only tell you how he’d never had a break in life, how the cops all were out to get him, and all women were stuck up.

He was what the Brits call a village eejit. And even worse, he had no interesting stories to tell. That said, there were two interesting stories to be told about him.

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A crook’s pension

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The first was his retirement from his life of crime. Of course he didn’t do it voluntarily, since it would’ve required intelligent thought on his behalf. Instead, it was forced on him.

What happened was his family, who were a humble but honest and hard-working lot, finally got sick of his nonsense and came up with a brilliant plan to end to it. They decided to pool their resources and basically support him. So they rented him a tiny one-room apartment and gave him enough cash for his beer and skittles. Their only condition was he was to stay on the straight and narrow. If he strayed, he was back on his own.

This was explained to him by his uncle Buck. Uncle Buck was built like a fire hydrant, had been a Korean War Marine, and brooked no nonsense. After he told BF the plan, he said if BF so much spit on a sidewalk, Buck was gonna come looking for him. Then Buck sealed the deal with a couple of love pats knuckled off the top of his least favorite nephew’s skull that gave BF a ten-hour throbbing headache … and a clear reminder of the deal.

Of course, to BF it was a fabulous deal. Like most lowlife cons, he was lazy and stupid. Now, for literally doing nothing, he had it made: He had a room bigger than a cell which he could leave when he wanted, and enough ka-ching to support himself in the manner to which he was accustomed.

Actually, his family may have gotten that idea from the British Royal family, who did the same thing to keep the Duke of Windsor out of both their hair and their sight. So in reality BF was in the company of royalty: He, the village eejit of Potsdam, was just like the Duke of Windsor, the village eejit of Great Britain and the whole damned empire.

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A success story

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The second story illustrates perfectly the difference between an incorrigible eejit and the rest of us.

In his usual fashion, BF had broken into a store and gotten busted. But this time it shook out with a couple of different twists. First was the store’s location, which was a literal stone’s throw from the police station. Second, he did it at 0400, which he thought was the most opportune time since almost no one was out and about. He was right about almost no one being out and about. But not about it being the most opportune time, since who was out and about were the cops.

So, as oblivious as usual, BF was traipsing through the store, taking his own sweet time to check out the goodies — in the beam of his flashlight, no less! Meanwhile, outside the store were two of Potsdam’s Finest, waiting patiently for St. Lawrence County’s all-star cat burglar to all but fall into their hands, which he did.

For all his moral bankruptcy and criminal proclivities, BF was not was violent. So essentially he got nabbed, got cuffed, got read his rights and got booked with a philosophic acceptance that would’ve made Marcus Aurelius proud.

Just before he was put in the cell, the arresting officer, a grizzled old-timer who’d been putting BF away since he was a rookie, couldn’t contain his curiosity.

“Tell me one thing, Ben,” he said. “Just between you and me and completely off the record.”

“What’s that?” said BF.

“How,” said the cop, “could you have possibly thought you could rob a store next to a police station and not get caught?”

BF let a long moment pass, probably for dramatic impact, and shared what he thought was The Secret of the Ages.

“Cuz,” he said, with a sly smile spread across his face, “you never caught me any of the other times.”