On Coffee

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My first summer job was at a company that made high tech fans for the military. I reported to work holding my lunch in a paper bag and waited for instructions. Merlin, head of the maintenance department, sized me up.

"Find Dave, up to the main shop, and bring back the left-handed monkey wrench I lent him."

"O.K."

Dave put his hand over his mouth, looked around, and said, "Oh, yeah, Bert's got it, down to the paint shop."

Bert sent me to Shorty in the pickling shed. Shorty said he'd had it but didn't know where it had gotten to. I ran back to maintenance and explained to Merlin. There was a short silence. One of the guys said, "Van Rijn fired all the left-handers!"

Laughter everywhere, somebody slapped me on the back, "Welcome to Rotron, kid."

"God, I'm dumb!"

"You'll get smart. Hey, there's Lester." A man with a patient smile stopped a coffee cart outside the maintenance shack. I didn't like coffee, but I figured I'd better start getting smart. The guys in front of me added evaporated milk from a can on the cart, so I did, too. Sweet and hot, a strange taste that I got used to having every morning.

We would sit around for 15 or 20 minutes, talking. The stories were hilarious, told deadpan, often about people who thought highly of themselves, and how they found out different. I've lost my taste for evaporated milk, but I'd go a long way for more of those stories.

(The image is by Victor Romanyshyn. We did several shows together in Portland, Maine.)