SPOILED PRODUCE

By Johnathan Embers

PREFACE

The following tale is about coming of age and spiritual enlightenment during a peculiar romance while working for an odd produce company in the mid to late 1980’s. This is a work of fiction based off of actual characters and situations that the storyteller experienced. It is intended to be both funny and heartwarming, while also inspiring.

CHAPTER 1

FULL CIRCLE

Whoosh and a flash of flame happened simultaneously as I walked into my place of employment. It was strange how the last three years had come full circle that day for various reasons.  It was my last day working for Leonard Lake Produce Inc. It was an extremely cold day in early March, and Lenny Lake, the owner and boss was heating the back of his delivery trucks with propane and open flamed heaters. You heard me right, open flame heaters on moving trucks to keep the produce from freezing.

Lenny and Dean Benet, a driver and warehouse laborer like me, had been attempting to light a heater. If you’ve never seen one of these heaters, they have a round base that sort of looks like a bowl.  Extending up from this bowl is a two foot tube about a foot wide with a little roof that has a couple inch gap from the tube so heat can get out and do its job of warming. This particular heater that they were trying to light was missing this little roof. So I show up just in time to see Dean say “not yet” just as Lenny pushed the pilot and flicked the lighter that he held. I could smell gas from the ten feet away that I was standing.  So I wasn’t surprised when there was a whoosh of flame out of the top of the tube and Dean’s hat shot off of his head and flew toward me. I opened my hands and caught it as if he had tossed it to me. He briskly moved toward me, patting his big walrus mustache. It wasn’t burning, but I guess he didn’t know that. He quickly placed the ball cap onto his bald head, not liking his shiny dome to be exposed.

“Thanks,” he said, rolling his eyes at the current fiasco.

“No problem,” I told him as I extended my hand. “By the way, it’s been nice working with you. In case I don’t see you later.”

He grabbed my hand with both of his and pumped vigorously. “That’s right.  Today’s your last day. Yeah, it’s been real good. Good luck at UPS, don’t become a delivery snob.”

“Delivery snob?” I inquired.

“Yeah, you know, UPS is the most prestigious delivery job, isn’t it?” He said with a chuckle.

Dean was forty, give or take. He was tall and lean and had a blonde gray fringe around his mostly bald head. His gray eyes were close set and so intense he sometimes looked crazy, especially when he was expounding on government conspiracy theories. His mustache was the same color as his head hair, except for a spot in the middle that was an orange brown from nicotine. It also looked comically big on his narrow face. I always thought that he looked like somebody who could have been in Monty Python.

“I won’t become a delivery snob.  I’m just glad that I won’t have one of those in my truck,” I said, pointing at the flame thrower.

Lenny frowned at my comment, but extended a hand toward me. “I won’t be here when you get back from your route, so good luck at UPS. If things don’t work out there, let me know.”

With that Lenny shut the back door of the delivery truck so it could warm and went to his office.  Lenny wasn’t one to give compliments. No, he was one to let you know if you had the smallest screw up. So Dean and I both turned to watched him walk away, stunned at his kind gesture to me. Dean wore a far out spacey expression, like he was one the Darling boys from the Andy Griffith show. I suppose I was doing the same if I could have seen myself.

“Wow!” Dean exclaimed. “I’ve worked for Lenny over ten years, and I do believe that was the nicest thing that I’ve ever heard him say to one of his employees.”   

“It was definitely the closest thing to a compliment that I’ve ever gotten from him,” I said. “And the strange thing is in six hours I won’t be his employee anymore.”

Dean half snorted and half laughed. “Well that makes sense though; Lenny’s just looking out for Lenny. You’re one of the best workers that I’ve seen come through here and believe you me, I’ve seen plenty. He just wants you back if you’re ever available. That’s the only reason that you heard something resembling a compliment. You’re on your way out the door and you’re a good worker.”

I shrugged. “I’ll take it. Better than don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”

“That would even be considered nice for Lenny,” Dean said.

Lenny’s head appeared from around a corner. “Why are you still here?” he said to Dean.

“Take care buddy,” Dean said to me as he slapped me on the back. Then he wasted no time getting into his truck.

I went off to the break room. As I walked, I thought about how fitting my last work experience with Dean was. You see the very first time that I had met Dean he had just walked onto a dock level delivery truck to get a two wheel dolly off of it. The truck was running and apparently had someone in it. As I approached the back of the truck, Dean was on his way out with the dolly. He smiled at me and I believe he was about to introduce himself to me when the truck abruptly drove away from the dock. Dean’s eyes widened, looking like silver dollars on his narrow face. With the dolly still clutched in his hands, he leapt for the dock. His toes barely made contact with the surface of the dock. If I hadn’t been standing there to grab his arm and pull him to safety, he would have taken a fall off the dock. Once again the ball cap that he was wearing shot off of his head, but not getting near the air that it did with the flame thrower. He looked me in the eye with a crazed intensity I would soon become accustomed to and spoke to me for the first time.

“Man, sometimes life is just a matter of inches!” he declared.

Minutes after my mind reviewed my first encounter with Dean, I sat at a table with a steaming cup of hot chocolate and scanned the newspaper. As my eyes previewed the various headlines and articles, I noticed one that said something about six men arrested in a male prostitution sting. I turned the page and continued to scan other news, but something tugged at my brain to go back.

Apparently there was a certain park in the city that was a hot spot for gay men to meet and or hook up. And apparently six men had made arrangements to pay some other men to share in some intimacy. Five of the names meant absolutely nothing to me, but one of the names was very familiar to me indeed. Myron D. Baumgartner was charged with offering an undercover police officer money in exchange for sex. He was also charged with resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer. I reread his name and his charges. Then I read it again and again and again. I sat back in my chair and felt my mouth say Wow.

You see Myron D. Baumgartner was my high school sweetheart’s father, and he’s also the person who helped me experience the most humiliating, embarrassing, and awkward moment of my life. No, it had nothing to do with male prostitutes; it did involve something of a sexual nature however. It had to do with his daughter, me, and a condom in a toilet. I’ll share this awkward tale later, though.

What I meant about my last day at Lake Produce Incorporated coming full circle not only had to do with my Dean encounter, but also reading about Myron and his arrest. You see, he was indirectly involved in my life’s journey landing me at Lake Produce in the first place.

It was the best of times and the worst of times. Or vice versa.