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Authors: Josh Shoemake
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right?”
You’d be surprised at what gets some
people going. Billy takes this as an invitation to talk politics. Looks to get
real heated up about the perniciousness of the big city from where I’m seated.
Uses the phrase “moral turpitude” in a sentence if I’m not mistaken. Thankfully
there is my grin, and with a dose of it I’d otherwise think unhealthy for a man
of his size, I manage to get him around to his life in Arizona, the wife and
the kids and whatnot. This is his first visit to the Big Apple, and he’s
missing them a lot. Figured it would be better if he went alone the first time,
he says, to get the lay of the land, so to speak. Next time maybe he’ll bring
the lot of them and take in a few Broadway shows. I ask what he does for a
living, and he pulls out a card from his jacket pocket:
Bill
Sidell
Mister
Pyrotechnics
Eastern
Arizona Fireworks Association
Been in the fireworks business since
he was a kid, he tells me. Inherited the business from his folks. He does the
Fourth of July, he does birthdays, he does New Year’s Eve – year-round
pyrotechnical expertise. Apparently he’s made quite a name for himself too.
Taken fireworks to a whole new level in Eastern Arizona, such that he’s been
named Mister Pyrotechnics three years running. The problem is, he tells me, fireworks
can be a dangerous business, and he’s been in it long enough to know that it’s
not something he wants his own kids going into. Too risky. It’s been bothering
him lately. What if something happened to him? How would the wife and kids get
along if he were hurt or even, God forbid, killed? No, he’s looking to set
himself right in an up-and-coming business. Make a better life for the family.
That’s why he’s in New York City. Scouting the prospects for an exciting new
venture.
When I ask
what kind of prospects he’s talking, he takes off his glasses and wipes them,
looks out through the windows to the street, then swoops back in on me hard:
“You know I knew as soon as you walked in here that we’d end up talking.”
“Maybe you
better try that out on the waitress,” I say, fluttering the eyelashes a bit.
He laughs.
“Not like that. Let me ask you something. What do you know about pheromones?”
“Not a hell of
a lot, but then I have a feeling you’re willing to educate me.”
“How about the
sixth sense?” he says, reaching down for his briefcase. “Love at first sight?”
He spreads a brochure on the table in front of me and reads aloud, pronouncing
each word as if it’s an individual little miracle: “ Scent Sense: The Miraculous
Science of Pheromones. That sixth sense I was talking about is now
scientifically proven. They’re called pheromones, and they’re tiny molecules we
send out to communicate emotions and feelings.”
“The company I
represent,” he continues, “is the first to take advantage of this rapidly
advancing field to create a line of perfume and beauty products that are
literally irresistible. Here’s how it works: in recent years scientists have
discovered what they call the vomeronasal organ – tiny cavities on either side
of the nasal wall. This is a major discovery. This is your pheromone sensor,
and it is connected directly to the hypothalamus, the emotional core of the
brain. Messages received by the hypothalamus bypass the intellectual brain and
are immediately felt .”
He’s on a
roll, and I guess I’m a good listener. Maybe I would have made a good priest.
Father Willie. Who knows? If only I’d taken that other path diverging in the
wood, as made famous in the great poem by Mister Robert Frost. The path I took
I guess you wouldn’t even properly call a path. Really I more or less took the
woods, and don’t let anybody tell you it doesn’t sometimes get lonely out there
with the wild critters and the hoot owls. One thing that heaven has taught me,
however, is that there’s nothing worse than days after days that all look the
same, and in the woods I do
You’d be surprised at what gets some
people going. Billy takes this as an invitation to talk politics. Looks to get
real heated up about the perniciousness of the big city from where I’m seated.
Uses the phrase “moral turpitude” in a sentence if I’m not mistaken. Thankfully
there is my grin, and with a dose of it I’d otherwise think unhealthy for a man
of his size, I manage to get him around to his life in Arizona, the wife and
the kids and whatnot. This is his first visit to the Big Apple, and he’s
missing them a lot. Figured it would be better if he went alone the first time,
he says, to get the lay of the land, so to speak. Next time maybe he’ll bring
the lot of them and take in a few Broadway shows. I ask what he does for a
living, and he pulls out a card from his jacket pocket:
Bill
Sidell
Mister
Pyrotechnics
Eastern
Arizona Fireworks Association
Been in the fireworks business since
he was a kid, he tells me. Inherited the business from his folks. He does the
Fourth of July, he does birthdays, he does New Year’s Eve – year-round
pyrotechnical expertise. Apparently he’s made quite a name for himself too.
Taken fireworks to a whole new level in Eastern Arizona, such that he’s been
named Mister Pyrotechnics three years running. The problem is, he tells me, fireworks
can be a dangerous business, and he’s been in it long enough to know that it’s
not something he wants his own kids going into. Too risky. It’s been bothering
him lately. What if something happened to him? How would the wife and kids get
along if he were hurt or even, God forbid, killed? No, he’s looking to set
himself right in an up-and-coming business. Make a better life for the family.
That’s why he’s in New York City. Scouting the prospects for an exciting new
venture.
When I ask
what kind of prospects he’s talking, he takes off his glasses and wipes them,
looks out through the windows to the street, then swoops back in on me hard:
“You know I knew as soon as you walked in here that we’d end up talking.”
“Maybe you
better try that out on the waitress,” I say, fluttering the eyelashes a bit.
He laughs.
“Not like that. Let me ask you something. What do you know about pheromones?”
“Not a hell of
a lot, but then I have a feeling you’re willing to educate me.”
“How about the
sixth sense?” he says, reaching down for his briefcase. “Love at first sight?”
He spreads a brochure on the table in front of me and reads aloud, pronouncing
each word as if it’s an individual little miracle: “ Scent Sense: The Miraculous
Science of Pheromones. That sixth sense I was talking about is now
scientifically proven. They’re called pheromones, and they’re tiny molecules we
send out to communicate emotions and feelings.”
“The company I
represent,” he continues, “is the first to take advantage of this rapidly
advancing field to create a line of perfume and beauty products that are
literally irresistible. Here’s how it works: in recent years scientists have
discovered what they call the vomeronasal organ – tiny cavities on either side
of the nasal wall. This is a major discovery. This is your pheromone sensor,
and it is connected directly to the hypothalamus, the emotional core of the
brain. Messages received by the hypothalamus bypass the intellectual brain and
are immediately felt .”
He’s on a
roll, and I guess I’m a good listener. Maybe I would have made a good priest.
Father Willie. Who knows? If only I’d taken that other path diverging in the
wood, as made famous in the great poem by Mister Robert Frost. The path I took
I guess you wouldn’t even properly call a path. Really I more or less took the
woods, and don’t let anybody tell you it doesn’t sometimes get lonely out there
with the wild critters and the hoot owls. One thing that heaven has taught me,
however, is that there’s nothing worse than days after days that all look the
same, and in the woods I do
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