23 August 2004


Today marks five years since I began working in this labyrinthine office. Though this is my longest stint working for the same employer, I have not had many jobs since becoming legal labor. First, there was Page's Sport Shop on the village green. A town landmark dating from the '40s. The same place my father would go to buy hockey pucks and bb's. Page's was long afterschool afternoons and Saturday morning hangovers. Page's was new-old-stock sneakers from 1974, heat transfer t-shirts with flocked cooper lettering, and '60s highschool track team photos. I worked with two kind, older gentlemen and they treated me with deference, as though my future was going to be huge. They were unaware that I was using company time and the engraver to fashion first place trophies for my friends ("Bong Toke Champeen - 1988"). College forced my resignation and have I missed working there and still have dreams where I'm standing behind the counter and I've forgotten how to count out change.

College and a short, successful run as a part-time lobsterman /part-time privateer, and then on to my worst job ever--the cook at a local breakfast/lunch joint(aka Ristorante Anathema). I began as the dishwasher but was suddenly promoted when the volatile cook, with a mighty heave, sent a 10 pound box of mushrooms sailing out the kitchen entrance into the dining area at a fleeing waitress. And then four glacial years of crack-crazed boss ladies, dilapidated alcoholic co-workers, grease and grimness and sorrow. Perhaps my fondest memories were those of Fred Lowden, an 86 year old farmer who refused to retire. Every morning he'd arrive at 7 sharp in his faux wood-paneled Country Squire which was loaded down with chainsaws, fuel cans, tool boxes, fertilizer, hay, sledgehammers, fishing rods, rifles, hand guns, and assorted pieces of rusty scrap metal. On the front seat was a large box of dog biscuits out of which he'd fish a nip of Yukon Jack or Rebel Yell--for the cook. He'd enter the kitchen silently through the back door and drop his grimey leather work gloves on the toaster to warm. Fred smelled like chewing tobacco and cow manure and he told the dirtiest jokes & stories I've ever heard. The way that old man used the word 'pecker' in a raunchy sentence was flooring.

Then one day I told my boss I wasn't coming in ever again. A year of unemployment followed where I survived with side jobs which involved the design and construction of stone walls for the gardens of the wealthy. And just as I was about out of money and hope I answered the cryptic ad announcing "mindless work available".

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