Pushed too far

Me Pops could hold his temper very well. He held it often when he would have been within his rights to lose it. Still, when he let it go, you were impressed. He let it go once on a guy known as Jake the Snake. And not the wrestler.

I'm not sure exactly how Jake earned his moniker, but I have a suspicion. He argued everything. If a part was available in red he wanted to know why it wasn't scarlet. If told cables were readily available in twenty-five foot increments he'd cry he had to have one thirty foot long, nothing else would do. Yet most of all he argued price. He argued price until the day Pops was sick of it.

Jake came in for some ten dollar part. "Ten dollars," Dad told him.

"You give it to me for seven," Jake countered, demanding rather than asking.

That set Pops off. He slammed the part back into its bin and yelled, and I mean yelled, "Get out of my Shop. I don't want your business!"

"You throwing me out?" Jake asked, appalled. "I can buy you out ten times over!"

Pops barked back like a drill sergeant, "The Hell you can, 'cause I'm not selling. Now get out of my Shop!" Jake stomped out, and Dad stomped into his office.

You could get away with a lot with Pops. But you could still push him too far.