One of the greatest problems I had in my youth was that when I really,
really got angry I would sometimes have no recollection of what I'd done
until I'd calmed down, then others would have to tell me what had happened.
One place I was working with this real irritable cook. He worked three
jobs to buy his wife all the things she wanted and was always grumpy and
despisable. Years later I think his wife left him, and he shot himself.
But this particular day he was really being despisable to the waitresses.
I had gone out back with the trash and came back in. He was screaming
at one of the waitresses. All of a sudden he picked up a butcher knife,
hurled it the whole length of the kitchen, and it stuck in the door fractions
of an inch from my nose!
The next thing I remember I was in the toilet cleaning up, when the
boss banged on the door and asked if I was all right. I told him "Yeah."
He told me if I wanted him to he'd take me home early and I said "No. I'll
finish the shift." When I got back to the dish machine the cook was at
his station working. But every time he looked at me he started trembling.
One of the waitresses came up. "My God!" she exclaimed, "I thought
you were going to kill him!"
"What happened?" I asked.
"You got this incredible look of rage on your face," she answered,
"you pulled the knife out of the door, walked across the kitchen, grabbed
him by the front of the shirt, lifted him right up into the air, put the
knife under his chin and said if he ever did anything like that again he'd
eat the damned knife! Then, you threw him in a corner and drove the knife
in a cutting board, headed off for the toilet. I'm just standing there,
frozen. I couldn't move."
I told her I was sorry I frightened her, and she said it was all right,
she understood. After that that particular cook very rarely started hollering
at anybody when I was in the kitchen. But I don't think he ever spoke to
me again. Any time he wanted something done he had somebody else ask me
to do it, which really didn't hurt my feelings at all. As a matter of fact
it pleased me very much.
Somebody asked how we could possibly say a community like Bangor, ME,
was infested with homosexuality. Well, we'll tell you.
When you're walking through a park in broad daylight, and come upon
two men mastrubating each other in front of women and children, go get
a police officer, and the police officer refuses to do anything, even threatens
to arrest you for bothering him, that community has a problem...it has
a SERIOUS problem!