Excentric
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| MEMORY . . .
by Joseph G. Evrard, Staff Kentuckian“Was it a left turn or a right turn?” I wondered as I sat at the intersection. I thought I had been paying very close attention as my wife told me how to get to the beauty supply store. She needed some fancy-dancy special kind of hair roller and had asked me to pick some up for her while I was out running errands.
Sure, I knew my way around town well enough. Good grief, I’d lived here long enough! I knew where all the important places were. I Could navigate quite well, thank you, to the grocery store, the barber shop, the electronics store, the auto parts store, the butcher, the baker, the nacho chip maker, the pool room, the corner bar, the beer store, Hooters. Where else does a guy need to go?
Well, today I needed to go to the beauty supply store and I was absolutely stumped as to how to get there. Of course I had listened closely to the directions. Doesn’t every guy pay absolutely flawless attention to everything his wife says? No, I didn’t need to write it down. I’m not senile. I can at least remember some simple driving directions. I must have gotten momentarily distracted by that story about the girl’s bikini volleyball team on ESPN.
Anyway, I HAD to remember. Going home empty handed was NOT an option! I stared down at the steering wheel and tried to concentrate…
The steering wheel in my car is black. Black as coal. Black as tar. Black as midnight at the bottom of a well on a moonless night. Black as the inside of a cow. My first bike was black. I could remember how it looked in the bike shop window. I’d walk by there every day just to make sure it was still there and that nobody had bought MY bike. Weeks passed. Months passed. I worked and earned every penny I could, saving up for the big day when I could buy that bike.
The bike had been built in a factory in Ohio, a place where nothing much happens except for bikes and tires and blimps and stuff. The factory that made my bike was kind of interesting because it was the first large industrial operation in the town that eventually grew up around it.
If it hadn’t been for the bike factory, the town never would have grown and prospered and become well known like it did, so in later years folks who had been born and raised there would have had to tell people they came from a place nobody ever heard of.
The main building of the bike factory was constructed of bricks made right on site by Italian immigrants who had brought the skill of brick making with them from the old country.
Many Italian brick makers were the children of bakers so they were used to large ovens. Being comfortable around large ovens is important to a brick maker because bricks are baked in ovens just like bread is.v
Some people who dreamt all their lives of going into the brick making business, invested every penny they had in their business startups only to have their aspirations cruelly shattered by an unforeseen onset of magnathermapplianceaphobia, which is the fear of large ovens and is considered one of the world’s few completely incurable phobias.
Psychologists have studied this and many other unusual mental conditions under government grants administered by the Department of Strange and Bizarre Behavior’s Office of Research into Things that make People Go Hide Under the Bed, better known as the “ORTMPGHUB.”
People who work in this organization are specially trained in the art of verdanture, which is the science of choosing just the right shade of green to paint the office walls to create the optimal combination of restful tranquility and gentle stimulation.v
An interesting and little-known fact about the paint business is its success in leading all other sectors of American industry in the goal of becoming independent from foreign oil. Many years ago all paint was oil-based. With aggressive research and development, paint manufacturers have replaced almost their entire product lines with high-performance water-based coatings that are tough, long lasting and easy to use.
Oil is still important for some applications. When I finally bought the bike I’d saved so diligently for, I made sure to oil it up good before I left the bike shop, zoomed down the street and turned right into my driveway.
TURN RIGHT! TURN RIGHT? YES! TURN RIGHT! That was it! She’d told me to turn right to get to the beauty supply!
See, I CAN remember things!
See ya around,
BUCK
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