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During my time in Poulsbo, I met more than a few folks who shared with me stories about jobs and careers they had; I met a
guy who had been a professional movie stuntman in Hollywood; he had been in a lot of movies. I don’t know if it had been worth
it though; his body was a wreck and he was in just about constant pain. Speaking of contant pain, I got called out to a house
once where a 22 year old guy was very agitated and just generally mad at the world. His parents told me that he had thrown
himself so much into high school baseball -with the goal of going pro- that by the time he was 20 years old he had just about
permanantly destroyed both of his shoulders and both of his knees and now addicted to opiates.
Not done yet talking about meeting folks with interesting jobs.. I knew two older gentlemen in town who had worked for NASA
during the Apollo space program. One of the guys had been a flight director, and the other guy had been some kind of a manager
..I can’t remember what he had done exactly but I do remember he had an absolutely superb model collection in his den; all
kinds of professional museum quality scale rockets and spacecraft, and certificates and random things like space shuttle tiles
and random spare parts from various space program projects. It was super impressive.
Me, talking to a sad, 60 year old homeless woman who was living out of a pickup truck. She said her kids hated her and her
husband had recently died. “What did he do for a living?” I asked. “He was a cook,” she replied. “Worked for twenty years at
IHOP.” Long pause while I figured what the likelihood was that IHOP offered pension plans to their cooks. Based on admittedly
very incomplete information – my own observation of the condition of the old woman living in truck – I concluded IHOP
probably did not have an actual retirement plan for their cooks. Hence, the homeless widow living in the pickup truck situation.
Burglar snuck into a house at 7 am; the front door had been left unlocked. The family dog in the living room started barking,
and scared the burglar way. I told the family the dog should get a bowl of gravy or something for being just the Goodest Boy.
Also, keep your doors locked, everybody!

