While the boss is away the men will play

By Jack Elliott
Correspondent

A really dangerous situation arose at the Bakery in Drizzle Creek the other week. The morning coffee crowd started off balanced enough, but then Grace left to punch the clock. Sheila looked nervously around as a couple more males entered and she then beat a hasty retreat to the sanctuary of the insurance office.
Within minutes there wasn’t a vacant place around all four back tables. Nothing but men. The Boss was busy punching down cinnamon buns in the back, so it was pour your own coffee- unsupervised.
Now an all male crowd is akin to a pack of dogs, or a lynch mob. One or two are controllable, but a whole gaggle is a disaster just waiting to happen.
In this situation there was only two saving factors, a: Pickle wasn’t there to instigate anything, and b: I was there to document any foolishness. Hence, the result was just the usual pack of lies without any serious consequences- so far.
“Smoked sturgeon, now there’s a treat,” opined Scrounger as he licked his lips, and fed mini-Scrounger a cookie and another coffee creamer.
“Anybody know where I could borrow a smoker?” he asked hopefully reaching for another creamer.
“No, I hear you been blacklisted, since you torched Larson’s smoker with that last batch of deer jerky you turned into charcoal,” shot back Moose.
“Besides, how you gonna catch a sturgeon big enough to smoke with that rotten old line you keep on your reel,” he added as he held out his cup for his fourth refill.
“No problem. Got a spool of that wire core trout line and wound it up on a 4-wheeler winch I scrounged up out at the dump. Whole rig cost me practically nothing,” Scrounger shot back as he whipped a photo out to show off his rig.
“Anybody got a spare battery and a set of jumper cables I could borrow to run the setup,” he added hopefully.
The next fifteen minutes was a heated exchange on the proper design and construction of a proper smoker and to whether there was any significant risk in using an old ‘hazardous material’ drum as a proper smoker. The opinion was that all had inhaled enough hazardous material during a misspent youth to mitigate any further damage.
Some how that led to discussion of Swede Larson’s heater in his old yellow ex-MTO van. The stock heater was non-functioning, so Swede had bolted in an old airtight stove with a smoke stack out one side window. This worked fine with a fifty mph speed limit providing enough draft to pull flame five feet out of the stack. All went well until Swede shut down the draft when the interior got too warm. Then with a loud thump, the lid started slamming up and down as an airtight is want to do, and finally a back-draft filled the interior of the van with smoke. Swede managed to avoid the ditch in a emergency stop, but the bag of meat in the back was fully smoked before the stove was brought under control.
In all fairness Swede was not present at this particular recitation, so check with him if you would like to clarify or confirm any facts.
Before the gathering could run completely amuck, the Boss came out of the kitchen, scowled at the mess on the tables, the empty coffee pots, wandered behind the counter and started punching the cash register.
“Coffee and one refill,” lied every individual in the pay line, without once making eye contact with the Boss.