It doesn’t smell like Chicken

Being that I am a restless  employee I have had the opportunity to work for all kinds of stores, not that I stole anything or did anything dishonest, I just always thought that the owner was an idiot and i couldn’t wait to quit that job. The first job I got was with a custom jeweler who was the only jeweler in town who would hire someone with no experience, willing to be fully exploited by a paranoid coke-fiend. My first day at work I showed up at 6am like he told me. He gave me $100 and said go down to the liquor store down the street and pick up some “supplies.” He said there’d be an order there waiting.

Being the trusting, faithful apprentice, I cruised on down to this dumpy liquor store and picked up several bottles of tequila and several cases of beer and a couple bags of ice. i thought we were having a party. I brought it back to the shop and he said put it in the fridge and then he said, “Grab me one of the oatmeal stouts, it’s a breakfast beer ya know.” He told me to grab one for myself, but since i was only 18, I said, “we can’t drink at work.” I was informed that he owns the damn place and he’ll drink whenever he damn well pleases! You know those big bottles with the straws in them, the super chug cups at the 7-11, well you can put a bottle of beer in the cup and put the ice around the bottle and put the straw in the beer. It works better than a beer cozy. I used to call it the “stealth cozy.” And if you’re gonna drink at work, be sure to have plenty of Halls mentholyptus because it hides the smell. I abstained from drinking at work until noon, but I became addicted to the Halls. I ate them by the handful – love that minty fresh breath- couldn’t get enough of it.

Anyway, later that day his wife came in and said, “You didn’t buy him beer did you?! You know he’s an alcoholic and shouldn’t be drinking.” I of course, being the loyal, faithful apprentice said, “Absolutely not!” That was my first day of being a jeweler.

       If their was not a police record of the activities that occurred in this shop no one would believe me, with the exception of the lucky few who were desperate enough to work for this nutter. I became good friends with one of the older goldsmiths at the shop and we refer to those times as back in the nam. I figured since the man is dead and has been dead for a good piece of time I would tell some tales so that they will be forever preserved in the internet.

      Casting the plumbers balls

      The boss had a good friend, this old guy who used to come over and get loaded with him and smoke stuff in the back room. Cancer strikes down the mightiest of foe and this guy was no exception -he got himself a raging case of testicular cancer, and like any guy, you wanna go down with all your parts if you can.  So the boss had an idea we would cast his balls in gold and put them on a chain so he will always have them. A deal was struck with the surgeon and, being that they are his parts he was entitled to them. They brought those dang things back to the shop for me to cast, let me tell ya it don’t smell like chicken. Talk about not wanting to have a bad casting failure, you only get one chance, well two, but I really didn’t want to have to make a mold.  I am going to leave out the technical details on how this was done out of common humane decency, except for the part involving tooth picks which I used to piece them back together with. I like to think that I played a big part in his recovery.

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kevinpotter

Latest posts by kevinpotter (see all)

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