These are the people in your neighborhood…

So in my office today there are 3 or 4 guys from the company that installs all the heating and cooling and security systems here. These are the installation dudes, pulling wires through ceilings, testing amperages, adjusting thermostats, exposing butt cracks and passing needle nose and wire cutters back and forth. Not so different from what I spend some time in my job really. They are making strange noises as they dig around in our ceiling adjusting stuff for the new office they are setting up next door I assume. They are standing where my office mate normally sits (he’s luckily on vacation). It’s a mild distraction except…

Except for their topics of conversation. I guess since I’m the only one in the office and I’m a guy, it’s gloves off for topics. A short sampling – Why their nagging first wives divorced them for having too much material stuff and how they spent that last two years of their marriage in a living hell, with special advice for the youngest of the group who isn’t married yet along the lines of ‘Just give her everything you own now and leave’. Then… Talks about where strip clubs are between here and Boston, whether you can take pictures there … oh and even some not so tongue in cheek talk about a ‘parlor’ in Portsmouth, NH that the youngest should visit sometime, secret address available if he wants it. Then a several minute debate if the ‘golden banana’ is closed in Boston or not (It apparently is closed, according to ‘Pete’ the eldest of the group).

Now the subject has drifted over to where the best place to shoot geese is around here, who owns that cow farm where they always land and will he allow hunting? and whether a crossbow bolt is the same as an arrow in regards to hunting turkey as far as the law goes (apparently it is not). Also, apparently goose meat is very dark and ‘livery’, especially Canadian geese.

I think what interests me the most, like rubber-necking at car accidents, about all this is it’s such a different world than I the sheltered, middle-class, happily married, suburban raised, vegetarian computer geek live in. It would just never occur to me to wonder what Canadian geese tasted like, or how the state defines hunting laws, or for that matter where secret seedy parlors were in Portsmouth, NH. I feel like I’m watching some edgy HBO special 🙂

So that’s a glimpse of my morning so far. 🙂

These are the people in your neighborhood

From our local paper, the Ellsworth American in the Thursday April 29th, 2004 edition. Section II, page 11;

ELLSWORTH – A car rear ended a stopped truck at the intersection of Route 3 and Beechland Road Monday because its driver, an Ellsworth woman, advised police she had been praying and did not see the truck.

Police said Billie Curtis, 29, had been driving a 1997 Hyundai Accent, which struck the read of a 1995 GMC pickup truck driven by Gregory Sanner, 34, of Salisbury Cove.

Police estimated $4,500 damage to the car. The truck had no visible damage, police said.