I Think Angels Took Pity on Me

The scene of the action. I worked in the mop
shop on the left side of the brown building.
Doc Ward's shop was behind us less than a quarter
mile. The station where I bought Mission Orange
Grape Nehi and, of course, Dr. Pepper is the white
building at the far left which often sold gas at 17¢ a 
gallon when he got into a price war with the station
across the street where Mom bought baloney.*

My friend John worked at one of my hometown's ubiquitous broom shops. Doc Ward had a shop on College Drive where John, now a respectable dentist, worked. I worked just down the street making mops for EK Birdwell. Everybody pretty much had a job in Keene, Texas. At one point it was the per capita most heavily industrialized college town in America someone figured. It was mostly because we worked our way through high school and college to pay our tuition.

John had warned me before I went to work at the mop shop to watch out for the pranks they liked to play on new guys. So, my second day at Birdwell's, the guys tried to send me down to Doc Ward's to borrow back our "handle stretcher." There was a whole, unnecessarily detailed story about mop handles that had been cut too short that went with the request. We worked strictly on piece time so a trip down to Doc's would not earn me a nickel and back then, I could get a bottle of Grape Nehi for a nickel. My thrifty soul, smelled a rat. 

So, I asked the if they wanted #2 or #4 stretching oil to go with it and by their smirks I knew I'd dodged one of those get-the-new-guy pranks. Later they tried to send me to the broom shop for a yarn stretcher. I used the time to step over to the gas station next door for a 16 oz.  Mission Orange. When I got back, I told Rocky who was on his third attempt to "get me" that the broom shop guys had put it under his mop machine. Rocky actually looked under the machine for a second before he caught himself.

For some reason I managed to avoid pranks. I think my guardian angel looked out for me. Tommy Lewis attempted to rig my mop taping and trimming station so that when you pulled the handle release it dumped a big box of mop yarn clippings on your head. Unfortunately (for him) I was over on the mop making machine learning how to make mops that day and EK came in to get a mop sample to put on one of the trucks. He wanted to make sure the sample was perfect and I don't think he trusted any of us to do it right. 

Anyway, E.K. shoved the mop's handle up into the catch above him, taped and trimmed the mop and then gave the release rope a big jerk. A cascade of white mop fuzz rained down on his head. He did not look happy. I managed to look duly shocked and thus avoided retribution. I was laughing so hard inside, however, I think I was internally hemorrhaging. Tommy on the other hand looked like a cat trying to pretend it hadn't just eaten the canary while having yellow feathers sticking out of his whiskers.

While working at summer camp, I had two pranksters go after me. I suppose I looked a likely target. My soon-to-be buddy, the young not-yet-a-doctor Allen tried putting jalapenos and bay leaves in my pancakes, but the kitchen staff, whose aid in the prank he'd enlisted, switched the poisoned pancakes and stuck some extra bay leaves in the ones they gave him. There's no taste quite like onion jalapeno chili powder bay leaf pancakes with butter and syrup. Jack ran choking and gagging across the dining area to the water fountain. It took him 3 days to get rid of the taste. He even apologized to me afterward for even thinking of such a thing.

Another prankster dumped water on one of the kitchen girls after he failed to pull off the old glass balanced on a nail gag on me. He picked the wrong victim. The next day the cook called him aside while one of the girls swapped his glass of red Kool-Aid for a glass of onion juice with red food coloring and ice in it. Tim took a big swig of it while the campers were singing the prayer song. The camp director fixed him with an icy stare when he started coughing and sputtering and he had to wait till the song was over before staggering to the water fountain to spend an unpleasant half hour trying and clear his palate.

I learned from all this that you never prank your boss, the kitchen staff, the bookkeeping staff or the innocent. Angels are watching and the word "karma" is probably derived from observation of the likely gleeful angelic works of retribution perpetrated upon naughty persons.

© 2023 by Tom King

*The photo above was taken from the parking lot of Ada's Cafe across the street from the mop shop, where I would on rare occasions buy myself breakfast or lunch of a warm Sunday morning, taking a considerable chunk out of my pitiful wages for the week. But boy howdy, the woman could cook!