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The Dump Rat
For a good stretch of my early working life I was a Job Shopper. (Basically a Permanent Temp employee on contract to another company. In my case, tech writer, drafter, or designer.) One of these positions was as a Designer working for IBM in the Burlington Vermont area.
I was actually working in Essex Junction in what I believe was an old barracks of Fort Ethan Allen. The project was the "8K BOM" a memory system for the relatively new computer age. My job was to draw an Isometric of the mechanical frame and registration bit plates. The frame was approx. 62" high, 62" wide, and 8" thick. At completion it held nowhere near the memory as the little card in a new digital camera. I later worked on the beginning of an encapsulated version. (Much like now, back then, the 8K BOM was obsolete before the first unit was delivered)
The prototype being worked on used a new product called EK-10. It was one of, if not the first, version of epoxy. With EK-10, the resin and the hardener not only had to be kept separate, but they had to be refrigerated until use. We worked in a basement area and during the winter months it was cold enough to leave the EK-10 on the sill of a window.
About two weeks into my contract, I received "The Treatment". The EK-10 was mixed and placed on wax paper. I was then asked to smell it. I was then told that if I placed a little on my forefinger and pressed it between thumb and forefinger, the harder I pressed the warmer it would get. It was good stuff. My thumb and forefinger almost became hot before they were stuck together the remainder of the day. Nothing would remove it. My proficiency on the drafting board that day was almost non-existent. That night I soaked in a tub for an hour and still lost skin getting the thumb and finger apart.
I soon became friends with my two jokesters. One was a member of the ski patrol and offered to teach me to ski. (That never panned out as he broke his leg skiing shortly after, and it did not heal until spring.) The other was a hunter who asked me to go deer hunting. Before deer season, we scheduled a trip to the dump to shoot rats. I had a 22 with scope and he explained how to attach a five-cell flashlight for night hunting.
We went to the dump. It was fun. I got to the point that I could zoom the scope in and as soon as those beady eyes showed in the cross hairs, all I had to do was pull the trigger. I would stay in one place and follow the mounds of garbage, see eyes, pull trigger.
All of a sudden I pulled the trigger and realized the eyes were different. Instantaneously there was a roar that I had never heard before. I lowered my rifle but could not see a thing for seconds. Then, there it was, a bear, standing on a mound of garbage, looking directly at me.
I turned and ran. I heard a motor start. Was my friend leaving? No, but by the time I reached the truck it was turned around and waiting. I jumped in and we were on our way. I never looked back. I never went hunting rats in the dump again either.
Shortly after my trip to the dump, I went deer hunting and was just missed by a young hunters bullet. Shortly after that, Vermont had the famous "Brown Out". Shortly after that I was offered a renewal to my six-month contract. I refused.
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