It wasn't too many days later that the wife quit her job at Borlan. It seems that the ladies of the sewing department didn't enjoy the same enthusiasm for the reincarnated Elvis as his mother. The father worked at Borlan for quite a while after his wife left even though the subject of his children still popped up from time to time. Most people, however, were sensitive to the man's feelings and would quickly change the topic to something more interesting.

"You know, that was some storm we had last night."

"It sure was. I hear it's supposed to rain all week."

After she had discovered her keys missing for several days in a row, she would place her keys on her desk and make a mental note of where she left them. Still they would disappear. She then began to write notes to herself with the location and time that she placed her keys on her desk. The keys continued to vanish and soon afterwards and she would say, "My keys were on my desk and I documented when and where I put them." She would open her desk drawer to retrieve the note only to find that it had mysteriously been moved to her coat pocket.

Claude's first wife was an immaculate housekeeper. Everything had a place and was in its place. When she and Claude started having marital problems he set out to drive her crazy. He would slightly tip each picture to make them just the tiniest bit crooked. He would move the ashtrays and knick knacks two or three inches from their proper location. The neatly stacked magazines would be moved so the edges were no longer perfectly lined up. His wife would light a cigarette and when she left the room he would put it out. "Why did you put my cigarette out?"

"I didn't. You put it out when you went in the kitchen."

"She would pour herself a drink, leave the room and find it on a different table. "Why did you move my drink?"

"It's right where you left it dear."

Yes, it was right where you left it dear. It's next to the can of penetrating oil.

It had taken me several years to rise to the position of head technician and I was finding that the job had some interesting perks. For example, it was usually the decision on the head technician as to whether or not the plant would be shut down due to inclement weather. I'm not sure how this rule came to pass and I don't think that it was ever an actual official policy, however, it seemed to be a part of the way things worked at Borlan Hosiery. Basically, their were two head technicians at the plant. If neither technician was coming to work because of snow or ice on the roads, the bookkeeper would announce that the mill would close.

Here is how the procedure worked: Let's say that there is a couple of inches of snow on the ground. I would contact Davis, the other head technician, or he would contact me. As to who contacted who first depended on who first rolled out of bed. For the sake of argument, let's just say that I called Davis. "Hey man. You planning on going in today?"

"No way. The roads are too slick. I'm not risking my life or damaging my vehicle trying to get to work."

"Me either. It's way too dangerous to be out driving."

The bookkeeper would get a call explaining that the conditions of the roads rendered them too treacherous for travel. She would then announce the closing of the plant to various media sources.

Thirty minutes later my doorbell would ring. It would be Davis. "You ready to go?"

"Yep. Just let me get my shoes on," I'd say.

We'd get in his four wheel drive Jeep and head out to play in the snow.

Borlan Hosiery was in serious financial trouble when I left it for greener pastures. Things were so bad that the company had to have a check ready for raw materials when they arrived or else the truck driver would leave without dropping them off. I decided to go to work for Nantucket Hosiery Company and exactly one month to the day after I left Borlan Hosiery, they closed the doors for good.

My new boss and a few others made me feel very welcome at Nantucket but several of the technicians automatically took a disliking to me because I had gotten a job they wanted. Some of them felt that they should have had a shot at the job before the company hired someone from the outside. It didn't matter that none of them were even remotely qualified for the job or that most of them weren't qualified to do the jobs they currently held. They started a rumor that the reason I had gotten the job was because I was an old high school buddy of my boss without taking into account that my boss was ten years older than me. I would have had to be an exceptionally smart student or my boss would have had to be exceptionally slow for this to have occurred but the fact is that I had never met my boss prior to my initial interview at Nantucket.

My boss and I decided to spread a rumor of our own. We let it slip out that we fought together during the Vietnam War and that I had saved my bosses life. Brad, my boss, had given me the job in appreciation of my heroic actions during the war. One morning as Brad and I discussed the tasks of the day, one of the rumor ringleaders approached us to gather more gossip for the rumor mill. "So, I heard you guys fought together in the war," he said.

"We sure did," said Brad. "As a matter of fact, I would probably be dead today if it hadn't been for my old buddy Rob." Brad put his arm around my shoulder.

"Is that a fact? How did he save your life?"

"Well," explained the boss, "We had been dropped behind enemy lines to do extensive reconnaissance when we found ourselves surrounded by the enemy. We had specific orders not to be taken alive so our only alternative was to stand and fight. As we were giving them everything we had, I was shot. I told Rob to leave me but he wouldn't. He was firing his fifty-caliber machine gun as he pulled me through the jungle by the waistband of my underwear. Just as he ran out of bullets, my waistband broke.

"Wow! That's incredible! What happened next?"

"Well, there we were in the middle of the jungle behind enemy lines, I was wounded, we were out of bullets. Rob picked up my broken waist band and started shooting rocks at the enemy until he had killed them all."

"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard! Rob isn't even old enough to have fought in Vietnam."

"Well, if that's the case, suppose you tell me how he's old enough to have gone to high school with me?" With that, Brad had effectively put an end to the "high school buddy" rumor.

Brad was an interesting as well as a highly intelligent individual. At one time in his life he had made a hobby of making homemade guns. He told me of an incident when he was working at a former job where he was cleaning one of his guns while everyone else was taking a break. He was working second shift at a small hosiery mill and was the only one in the knitting room as he unloaded the gun. As he began cleaning it he forgot that there was a bullet still in the chamber. The gun accidentally went off taking off a piece of Brad's finger before blowing a hole in one of the inspection boards. Blood gushing from his finger, he grabbed some rags and wrapped it tight.

Once the break was over he was approached by a co-worker who said, "What was all that noise out here a little while ago?"

Brad said, "What noise?"

"A big bang. We all thought one of the machines must have torn up pretty bad."

"That's funny. I didn't hear anything."

Brad was able to explain away his bleeding finger as an accident. He simply said that he cut himself while working on a machine and, as luck would have it, nobody noticed the hole in the inspection board until the next day. The one who noticed and reported the damaged inspection board was none other than Brad himself. He never manufactured or shot another homemade gun ever again.

Although his gun making days were over, his inventing days weren't. Brad made a very simple electric mousetrap using a metal plate, a plastic Popsicle stick, a fishhook and an old electrical cord. He glued the Popsicle stick to the center of the metal plate so that it stood up like a flagpole. Next he glued the fishhook to the top of the Popsicle stick and then attached one end of the electrical cord to the fishhook. He attached the other end of the electrical cord to the metal plate and put a piece of cheese on the hook. He plugged the cord into a wall socket and waited for the trap to work.

We were sitting in his living room on a Sunday afternoon watching a football game when the lights dimmed for a couple of seconds. Brad looked over at me and quietly said, "Got one." He led me into a backroom of his house where I witnessed a smoking mouse dangling from a fishhook. I must say that the smell was absolutely horrid but it did bring back fond memories of when Brad and I had fought together in the jungles of Vietnam.