primitive paranoia in the Sandhills

[franksolich]

“I don’t know why anybody upon meeting you for the first time would get the impression you’re retarded,” the property caretaker said.

“That’s because you’re not a Democrat, liberal, or primitive,” I said, “jumping to erroneous conclusions based upon a superficial few-seconds’ encounter.

“And when a Democrat, liberal, or primitive gets an idea in his head, it stays there…..forever and ever, despite all subsequent proof to the contrary.”

“But you don’t even look retarded,” he replied; “you look averagely normal, nothing wrong at all.”

“It’s the voice,” I said; “as wide and slow and shallow as the Platte River, where I spent my childhood, before growing up in the Sandhills.

“And what’s bad about it is that it’s the best that can be done; it can’t be improved upon.  I’m however satisfied with it; decent and civilized people tell me that I speak more clearly than natives of Massachusetts or coastal California.

“And people for whom English is a second language, or no language at all, have always told me, tons of times, too many times to count, that I’m the ‘most understandable’ speaker of English they’ve ever heard.

“As my father reminded me one time, only negative, insecure, paranoid, fearful, people with low self-esteem could possibly dislike franksolich—I guess that explains the primitives on Skins’s island—while decent and civilized people, the only people who really matter, would find me, at worst, unusual…..but in a curious, not a negative, way.”

I was going to ask him what his impression of me had been, when he first met me several years ago, but then decided, no.

- - - - - - - - - -

“I’ve probably told you this story before, or maybe not,” I said, “but anyway, the classic case of my being mistaken for being retarded happened during my first day as manager of the Reunion in Lincoln, Nebraska, during the late 1980s.

“It was a privately-owned student union in the center of the University of Nebraska city campus; an island of non-governmental property surrounded by a vast ocean of state property.

“It was owned by the biggest Democrat in the First Congressional District (Lincoln), who years later, about the same time I moved up here, went out into the country, jammed a loaded revolver into his mouth and pulled the trigger, after he’d been found out kiting seven million dollars of bad checks.

“It was sad, very sad, because he was the best boss I ever had—“

“Was that the one—“ the caretaker interrupted.

Yeah, I said; “the one with a short fuse and a volatile temper who, when angry with me, would jump up-and-down getting red-white-and-blue in the face, yelling and screaming and breaking things. 

“It was a good show, and always in front of an audience.

“That’s when I first met [the neighbor], who was then an 18-year-old freshman in college, innocently making photocopies on a self-service machine, when my boss suddenly kicked it away, denting the base, knocking the machine off the base, and breaking a showroom window.

“Some time, ask [the neighbor] about it; he could probably describe it better than I could, because I was preoccupied ignoring it while it was going on.

“The Reunion was a year old when I became manager, and already he’d gone through four managers, all of them Young Democrats, who hadn’t worked out for some reason or another.

“I was there four years, meaning this Young Republican lasted four times longer than all four previous managers put together. 

“He was the best boss I ever had, and I enjoyed working for him.

“But that’s a story—and a very long one—for another time.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“Anyway, during the morning of my first day as manager, I was out in the food court looking at something, when I spotted a courier from the insurance office, the base of my boss’s operations, coming inside and heading towards my office, with a bunch of papers.

“I’d never seen him before, but immediately recognized him for what he was; another one of those Young Democrats my boss hired as political favors for his cronies.

“Now, two things need pointed out.  I was dressed in the usual polo shirt and khaki slacks, informal collegewear popular at the time.

“And the food court at the time was manned by retarded people, who bussed and cleaned tables, under the supervision of a ‘social worker.’ 

“Since the building was rather large, and because I’m a nice guy, to spare him the trouble, I approached him, identifying myself as the manager, offering to take the papers so he could get going on his way.

“He looked at me kind of oddly, and then stiffly said, ‘thanks, but no,’ and went on his way.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“Some minutes later, when I went back to my office, which was behind the photocopying center, I was told he’d been laughing and chortling when coming in, saying that one of the retarded people bussing the tables had gone up to him, saying he was the manager of the building.

“But he wasn’t fooled, no way.

“Others worried about my reaction—not because I’d do something to him, but because they liked me and thought it’d hurt me—but this wasn’t anything I hadn’t had to deal with since, well, since I was a lilliputian toddler.

“This by the way was when I first devised the strategy of dressing well—not merely dressing well, but dressing a little bit more dressier than the norm—hoping that the high quality of my attire would distract attention from the low quality of my voice.

“And so thereafter, I always wore a three-piece suit; it was ‘dressier’ than the environment I was in, but not too much so; just a little bit.

“The next day, I announced that if this particular courier stopped in, he was supposed to be sent to me, to get introduced to the new manager.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“As it happened, he came in that same morning, and was sent to me.

“I was sitting in my office, my shoes off and my feet on the desk, idly tossing suction-darts at a signed poster of Tipsy O’Neill, then Speaker of the House—a campaign souvenir one of my predecessors had gotten back in Massachusetts—but still fully dressed in a three-piece pin-striped suit.

“He stopped in his tracks.

“’Hi, I’m the manager,’ I said; ‘the boss of this whole operation.’

“He started to say something, but I wasn’t paying attention, having gotten back tossing darts, aiming for the alcoholic nose on the ugly flaccid face of the corrupt old machine boss from Boston.

“Since I didn’t respond, he red-facedly backed out the door, and for the longest time until when we later became friends, kissed my ass.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“Who wouldn’t remember that?” the neighbor asked, when I was out in the garage with him while he replaced some tires on a piece of agricultural equipment.

“He was way out of control, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one worried that he’d throw you around too.”

True; my boss was short, only about 5’10” or so, but he was built like a bull, and could’ve flattened franksolich with one swipe.

“But it never happened,” I pointed out; “in all those years, he never touched a hair on me, which was why I was totally at ease being close to him, nonchalantly smoking a cigarette, those times he got out of control.

“Those times he got violent, there wasn’t any point in trying to placate him, settle him down.  Best for everybody else but me to get out of his way while he hit things and threw things around, until he spent himself.

“There was one time I saw the impossible happen; no one believes me, but really, I saw it with my own eyes.  He grabbed the ends of two live electrical wires, one with each hand.  For a split second I stood there, wondering what burning live flesh would smell like…..but while sparks crackled and flew, nothing happened.  To him.

“He had a reputation for being explosive, and so even when he was first new to me, I’d expected it, and wasn’t disappointed.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“I could react the ways I did, because I knew it was something else that was bothering him, not me.

“It’s a role I, and most other ‘handicapped’ people, have played all my life, being the target of someone’s misdirected anger.  People are afraid to express anger at what’s, or who’s, really bothering them, but they have a need to be angry, and so they take it out on us.

“Like George Bush was to drunken Bill on Skins’s island when the squalid greasy slob went off on a rant-and-rave.  In real life, drunken Bill had had an argument with his distant father about money or something, and took it out on George Bush.

“I’m really surprised more people didn’t pick up on it, because drunken Bill slobbered out a few dribbles of hints that his father’d pissed him off, whenever he went off on one of his jihads against George Bush.

“In my case, I suppose it’s a combination of having been the second-youngest brother, and then for a longer time after that, the youngest brother, in a large family full of hostile, contentious Democrats, liberals, and hippies whose minds got slowly addled over time with this nonsensical ‘better living through chemistry,’ and then that I’m deaf, hence an easy punching bag that isn’t really capable of hitting back.

“I was long used to it, by then.

“There was no point in trying to strike back, because there wasn’t that force, that impulse, in me.  The only way I ever learned to show anger was that my lips turn dry, and crack.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“Why was he the best boss you ever had?” the neighbor’s older brother asked over the breakfast table this morning.  “I remember when it was in the newspapers, and he sounded like a first-class asshole to me.”

The neighbor’s older brother and his wife, and the neighbor, had stopped here about 6:00 a.m., having been out in the foggy drizzle working with cattle all night long.  They weren’t done yet, and as the neighbor’s older brother and his family live way over on the other side of the county, they stopped here for breakfast before going back to finish up.

The kitchen, as usual, is open, I reminded them.  And just leave the dishes and cleaning; I’ll take care of it.

The other three had eggs done any which way, slabs of toast with real butter, piles of hash browns, clusters of bacon, orange juice, and coffee, all prepared by the neighbor’s older brother’s wife.

<<<had two slices of whole-wheat toast with real butter, a stalk of celery, and a dish heaped with half a pint of sour cream.

- - - - - - - - - -

“He was the best boss I ever had because he trusted me, absolutely,” I said.

“He wasn’t the least bit nervous about having a deaf person fully in charge of 60,000 square feet of a brick structure, through which 12,000 people passed each day, dealing with tenants, hiring and firing people, handling lots and lots of cash, and running the place as my own common sense and ethics dictated.

“He wasn’t always nervously checking on things to be sure I was doing them right, he acceded to my decisions without question, about what the Reunion should be doing, and if I was wrong, he wasn’t afraid to yell-and-scream at me.

“He of course was a Democrat and a liberal, but one of those rare exceptions, who didn’t see a deaf person—or a retard--as less able to function competently than a hearing person.

“He freely and easily put a lot of real-estate and a lot of money into my hands, something one doesn’t usually do for a retard.

“He was a busy man, with his fingers in many pies—but this particular pie was the one to which he paid the least attention, as he didn’t have to.

“The only thing he kept in his own hands was negotiating leases, but hey, that was understandable, as he was a real-estate agent, and ‘negotiation’ has never been any strong point of mine.

“The four years I was manager of the Reunion were its glory years 1988-1992; I left about the time my boss was getting romantically involved with a woman who ultimately proved his ruin, and now the whole thing’s just an empty lot.”

- - - - - - - - - - -

“How’d you get the job?” the neighbor’s wife asked.

“I’d gone to work there three months earlier, as evening shift-manager for the photocopying center.  There were lots of businesses in the place, but this was the only one my boss owned himself.

“My first night there, the manager of the Reunion, who also bossed the photocopying center, shook my hand, saying, ‘Well, here it is, it’s all yours.  I’ve got a party to go to, bye.’

“That was my ‘orientation.’

“Now, I could figure out the cash register and the self-service copying machines, but there were industrial-sized copiers, color copiers, a Macintosh computer, and a whole lot of binding, folding, collating, and stapling machines, and whatever else a photocopying place might have, which is a lot.

“And customers.

“I had no idea what to charge them, and so charged them whatever, but fortunately after the first six or half a dozen, a Young Democrat came in, saying he worked this shift too, and had been in the men’s room sitting on the commode, about the same time I showed up.

“Well, if nothing else, a deaf person is adaptable, and so I caught on.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“That was in early summer.

“About three months later, on an autumn Friday afternoon the day before a football game, I was in a bar with four other people who worked for my boss, including the manager of the building.

“I’d given up drinking a couple of years before, but at the time, smoking was allowed in bars, and so I went along.

“The four Young Democrats were sauced pretty good, and I’d downed three-quarters of a package of cigarettes, when our boss walked in.

“Now, when he walked in somewhere, everybody took notice.

“He strode over to our table, and started yelling-and-screaming at the manager of the Reunion.  As I figured it wasn’t any of my business, I didn’t bother trying to ‘interpret’ what was being said, and so I never knew what it was all about.

“The manager surrendered the keys to the owner, and left.

“Our boss stood there, looking at the remaining three Young Democrats and franksolich.  He stared at us all, but he stared at me the longest, maybe because I was the only sober person of the bunch.

“Then he handed the keys to me, and left.

“This was in a crowded bar, remember, with lots and lots of people seeing it.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“My first day as manager, when I walked into what was now my office, my boss telephoned me, telling me to go out into the food court and measure something.

“Because he had a habit of making unwanted advances to women—but his being a Democrat, I suppose it was okay—two tenants of the building had gotten a restraining order against him, forbidding him to come within fifty feet of their businesses.

“Really.  He owned the building, but there was a part of it he, the owner, wasn’t allowed to go.

“Some painters had painted lines on the floor, delineating the fifty-foot boundary, and he wanted to be sure he hadn’t been cheated.

“I went out, measured everything, and got back to him, saying there appeared a minor deviation of 1/16th of an inch in some lengths, but as it was in his favor, it was all good.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“Welcome home,” the property caretaker said as I walked inside in mid-afternoon.  “You were missed while you were gone.”

Probably, I thought; even though everybody does a good job in cleaning up this place, there were a few tell-tale signs that there’d been a party or two…..or three or four, while I was gone.

It’s never been a big deal, though; this is out in the middle of nowhere, and it’s good to have people around when I’m not, so as to keep an eye on the cats.

“How’d it go?” he asked.

“It was great,” I replied; “I got all that I wanted, but it’s a good thing [the business partner] went along with me.  They did Easter in the traditional Russian Orthodox manner, with plenty of holiday cuisine.

“I already knew what it was, and desisted, but he ate it up like a horse, thus gaining the approval and affection of all our hosts.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“Did you get anything new for the book?” he asked.

Yeah, I did, I said, “but I was considerably encouraged that all those chapters on the religion of the workers and peasants I’d written, I’d generally gotten things right the first time; there were only a few minor corrections that were needed, in things I’d misunderstood.

“While my memory and my impressions are of course ‘uncorrectable,’ when it comes to stating facts, I mean the book to be wholly accurate, a definitive work on what happens to a people and a society where fallible mortal man tries creating Heaven on earth, and makes it Hell instead.

“Imagine, for example, if the world was the way Skippy on Skins’s island wants it to be, using force and coercion and murder to do it, there’d come a new Dante, to write a new Inferno, describing it.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“The biggest correction involved my character sketch, or profile, of the abbess at that hospice for the dying.

“These people, who know their religion, insisted I’d ‘captured’ her ‘perfectly,’ even though only from a distance, and guessing, as she brow-beat the colonel of the provincial secret police over something.

“It was awesome, watching that.  The colonel was a big hulking guy, a little bit younger than me, and a graduate of a school of ‘physical culture’—he was strong and powerful, and could’ve beaten me into a red spot in the ground faster than Atman on Skins’s island could.

“She was tall, but very thin, and a woman.

“But she berated the Hell out of him, scolded him, nagged him, and he meekly stood by, humbly taking it.

“Surely a sight never seen during the socialist era, when the state was supreme, running roughshod all over people of goodwill and compassion.

“The mistake I’d made—apparently, because we’ll never know for sure, but it sounds probable—was that I’d assumed she refused my offer of 600,000 karbovanets simply because she didn’t like me.

“It was true she was somewhat hostile towards me, being a westerner and a Latin heretic, but there was probably a different reason she’d refused the money.  Their guess was she was trying to tell me I was supposed to put it in the ‘poor box’ in a dark corner of the church, where only God and I’d know I did it.

“But she of course didn’t know English, and the police colonel didn’t know English, and I didn’t know Ukrainian or Russian, so no one could explain it to me.

“Based upon other observations and experiences in the socialist paradises, I think that sounds more credible than my interpretation of it, and so I’ll use it in the book.

- - - - - - - - - -

“So…..” I asked; “anything happen here while I was gone?”

Well, there were a few parties and cookouts, he admitted, but I’d already noticed that.

“There was one evening all the old folks came out here, for a picnic.”

This property had once been a popular gathering-place for those growing up during the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, when the ancient woman who lived here before I did, was younger and more vigorous.

“They were impressed by what you’ve done since you’ve moved here.”

I’d moved here from town in the autumn of 2005, shortly after the scam that rocked the internet wound down; before then, it’d been vacant for 19 years, and falling apart; weeds as high as one’s shoulders, broken windows, holes in the roof.

“But I never did a damned thing out here,” I pointed out; “I just moved out here because it was good for the cats, and since other people were very anxious to have a warm human body in this remote area of the county, they all whipped it back into shape, brought it up to code, and made improvements.

“All I’ve ever done is live out here.”

“Well, they had a good time reminiscencing, and the sun was practically up before we could encourage them to go home, so we could start drinking.”

- - - - - - - - - - -

“Also, Joe and Jose brought their extended families to camp on the river; they didn’t want to be a nuisance for you, but since you were gone, they wouldn’t be.

“Texans know how to throw a barbeque, and we were all in on that too.

“Joe’s still worried about your toe-nail fungus, though.  How is it?”

Yeah, Joe, who like the retired banker’s wife, is an aficiando of simple natural cures.  He like she trusts modern medicine too, but only if simple natural things are tried first, and don’t work.

“Actually, it’s almost gone,” I said, “and Joe’s free to examine it any time; the toe’s turning into the best-looking toe of the bunch now.”

It’d been suggested that I soak the left foot in a basin with bleach or vinegar, and I’d done that, but was getting impatient with having to sit around an hour or so four times a day, the foot submerged.

I’d remembered that pure lemon juice had been suggested too, and when at the grocery store, spotted a display of those squeezable plastic “lemons” with juice in them.  There were both “lemons” and “limes,” and I opted to try the latter, to see if that’d work too.

Four times a day, I’d been squeezing lime juice in behind the toe-nail, and then gingerly scraping out the softened residue—as I’m not a surgeon, I didn’t poke or probe, just scrape—and results ensued much faster than I’d hoped.

- - - - - - - - - - -

“Anything else happen, besides your parties and cook-outs?” I asked.

“Well, Italianate Jesus showed up, with the hippywife primitive Mrs. Alfred Packer’s hippyhubby Wild Bill’s younger brother, the one born with both eyes on the same side of his nose.

“He was disappointed to miss you, but they had to move on; they’re going to work for Louie again this season, his carnival.  He knew they’d be this way during the summer, but not exactly when.

“He did leave some information for you, though.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“He said when Rhinestone Santa & Co. showed up in Indiana, they learned the buzzy one had absconded for points unknown.  It was a sore surprise for them, because they’d counted on him loaning them some cash, to get them up to northernmost Vermont, to start that ‘Buddhist’ commune.

“Out of money, it took them a while, but they made it to Boston, and tried looking up your good pal Manny, but Manny was ‘unavailable’ every time they called, as if he’d been forewarned they were coming his way, and needed some dough.

“Well, they were by then close enough to northernmost Vermont they could walk there, and so they got there.

“They looked up the bitter old Vermontese cali primitive, who seemed enthusiastic about what they proposed, this ‘Buddhist’ commune, and wanted to get involved.

“Rhinestone Santa recognized her as perfect for the ‘Buddha,’ even though there’s never been a woman Buddha before.  He thought the novelty of it would attract even more followers, and commissioned a bronze statue of her.

“Seated with her legs crossed, cali looks very much like the late Madame Chiang Kai-shek exposing her navel, and so’s been dubbed ‘Madame Buddha.’

“Time will tell, but Rhinestone Santa thinks he’s invented the perfect scam.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“I’m surprised you could get him to go along with you,” the caretaker said, “as it doesn’t seem his sort of thing to do.

“You must’ve been really persuasive, to drag him away.”

Persuasive, nothing, I said; “I’ve always made it a point to intentionally gravitate towards people who, if time, convenience, and finances allow it, are willing to see and try something new and different.

“And as he owed me for a few favors, well…..

“A primitive, being all paranoid and unwilling to take risks and ensconced in a rut where nothing changes from day-to-day, could never be a friend of franksolich’s.”

- - - - - - - - - -

I was reminded of spring break, during my junior year in college.  Everybody but a friend of mine and I were either headed back home, or down south, but we still hadn’t made up our minds as late as the evening before break started.

He was an Air Force brat, and his parents and younger brothers and sisters in Japan at the time, and I was an orphan.  We could’ve sat around Lincoln, getting drunk—in our group, he and I were the most enthusiastic drinkers…..among others who were hardly teetotalers themselves—but we felt a “need” to do something, anything.

The evening before break started, while at the supper-table, he mentioned, “I was reading that Anaconda, Montana, has the world’s tallest smokestack.”  He was always interested in random snippets of facts.

“That’s it,” I said; “let’s go to Anaconda, Montana, to look at it.”

Which we did, leaving the next morning, while everybody else either headed home or to the warm, balmy south.  It was pleasant weather in Nebraska, and we’d assumed it wouldn’t been any different way up over in western Montana.

Anaconda, Montana’s the furthest west I’ve ever been in my life, and as it seemed rather too close to squalid, decadent, congested California, that’s about the furthest west I’ve ever cared to go. 

“Not having checked the weather reports, we had no idea we’d be crossing the passes of the Rocky Mountains in raging blizzards, with chains on the tires…..and having only wind-breakers with us.

“But we made it there, and had a good time.  People wondered what was up, college students spending spring break in Anaconda, Montana, but gave us a good time anyway.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“Well, he thought meeting that old lady up there a few weeks ago was about the weirdest thing he ever saw,” the caretaker said.  “I got the impression he didn’t like it at all.”

“Of course he didn’t like it,” I replied, “because he’d never seen anything like it before in his life, and wasn’t sure how to take it.

“Well, we all confront things strange to us sooner or later—remember my rather rude and abrupt introduction to the socialist paradises, where there was no time at all, to stop and examine and figure out things.

“Or other sudden rude shocks that the deaf get every day in our lives, such as when I’m watching the coffee brew early in the morning, and suddenly someone who I wasn’t aware was around, taps me on the shoulder…..

“One can only ‘go along,’ and as it usually turns out, it isn’t such a bad ride after all.

“After he got over that first shock a few weeks ago, this time around, he took to them, and they to him, as easy as strawberries-and-cream.  And I was happy he went along, because he could do all the dining and socializing while all I had to do was sit back and watch.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

“You’ve been real quiet lately,” the neighbor said to me this morning.

“Well, I’ve been busy,” I pointed out; “after all, I’m working on the book.”

“And writing it into something as big as War and Peace,” he said.

Right, I said; “and then when I get done with it, I’ll let the experts cherry-pick for the best parts, and that’ll be the final book—although of course longer than what that idiot drunken Bill self-published twelve years ago.

“Maybe about a tenth the length of War and Peace.

“And besides, Skippy’s down because of that brain operation, and I’m still waiting for him to heal up.  I don’t want to be accused of mocking and tormenting a poor sick old man.

“And so the primitives on Skins’s island haven’t been so fun lately.”

- - - - - - - - - -

Uh, the neighbor said; “you haven’t checked lately.

“Your favorite literary inspiration the hippywife primitive Mrs. Alfred Packer’s been denigrating the decent and civilized people of Oklahoma again.

“I know that’s one thing that got your goat about her, after which you turned her into franksolich’s greatest literary inspiration.”

Yeah, I said; “she lived down there for eighteen years now, and still think she’s hot shit while Oklahomans are merely ignorant ‘fundie’ white trash.

“Well, I’ll go see what she’s said now, and maybe it’ll inspire me to move my story about the paranoia of the primitives along; it’s been kind of dragging.”

- - - - - - - - - - -

“Hey,” he asked, “whatever happened to that building, after you left?  It was torn down, and is just an empty lot now.

“It used to be really popular, full of people all the time.”

That was because it was a little island of private property right in the middle of the city campus of the University of Nebraska, and at the time, while smoking was barred on governmental property, it wasn’t in private businesses.

Its convenient location, plus that, meant it was the place to go, if one wanted to smoke while on breaks and at lunch.  The food court did a land-office business when college was in session, and not so badly when only university staff were around.

There’d been requests for a “no smoking” section, which I’d dismissed.  If someone wanted no smoking, well, the regular student union was just steps away from us.  My boss didn’t like it, but smoking was allowed everywhere inside the building, including in the beauty salon and the bank branch.

- - - - - - - - - -

I’d left after four years, having lasted four times longer as manager than my four Young Democrat predecessors put together.

After I left, my boss decided he could run the place himself, as I’d shown how easy it was, which it truly was.  But this was about the time he became obsessed with a blonde gold-digger who thought he had money, and in his assiduous courting of her, he neglected the building and its tenants.

Two years after I’d left, this once-full building was down to a single tenant, the owner of a Vietnamese dinery.

This particular tenant had come on board about the same time I did, and my boss, being a Democrat and a liberal, was also a racist, and didn’t like him.

The lease was particularly onerous, stricter conditions being place upon this particular tenant, and the rent was higher too.

The guy who owned it was about my age, and next to franksolich, was the nicest guy one could ever hope to meet.  As I couldn’t pronounce his Vietnamese name, I baptized him “Juan,” as if he were a Texan, an appellation to which he took no offense.

He was always trying to feed me, but I managed to get out of it, pointing out that I found his fortune cookies perfectly wonderful cuisine.  He got them for ninety-nine cents a gross from some Asian food supply house, and they came wrapped in flimsy cellophane, which to me indicated they were safe.

Anyway.

- - - - - - - - - -

Towards the end, the owner, desperate to finance his gold-digging mistress, offered the property to the University of Nebraska, which had always wanted it, but there was a hitch.

The sole remaining tenant, for whom the vast empty cavernous building had to be kept open and maintained as if it were stuffed full of tenants, pointed out he had a lease still good for about another year and a half.

And despite that his business was the only one in there, since cigarette-smokers still populated the place, as Juan’s competition, the other eateries, shut down and moved on, his own sales increased.

Juan raised a stink, and the university finally said, “well, maybe we’d better wait to buy the building when it’s all free-and-clear.”

Despite that my now-former boss was hanging on by the skin of his teeth, he was compelled to provide utilities, maintenance, food-court bussing…..in a 60,000 square foot building with but one tenant taking up circa 300 square feet.

to be continued