Amos's broom, or, a gift for Ella

I've spoken to you before about how superstitious me Grandpa Joe's friend Amos was, and that he was tight with a buck too. Well, if I recall correctly he had a girlfriend who was equally superstitious and equally Scottish. In fact, such qualities got my mother a nearly new broom.

Amos was moving one time and he enlisted me Pops and me Mom to help. As they had loaded just about everything into one of me Grandpa Joe's old welding delivery trucks, Amos's girlfriend (I believe her name was Eula) quietly took my mother over to the side.

"Here Ella," she said to Mom, "Take this broom home with you. I know it's wrong to move your broom when you move, but as this is a gift from me to you, it don't count."

You see, it's superstitious to move your broom when you move because it has within its fibers all the dust and bad things from your old home. All that you want to leave there, right? But as it was, Amos had only just bought the broom, and Eula couldn't stand the thought of leaving a perfectly good and virtually new item behind. Yet she knew Amos wouldn't stand hitch for having it moved. So she gifted it to Mom.

Who says superstition doesn't pay, at least for someone?

Amos's Turkey Day

The story may sound contrived, trite, or obvious. Yet it's a true story. I haven't even changed the names to protect the innocent.

Amos, you'll recall, was an old friend of me Grandpa Joe. You may remember also that he was considered tight. However true that might be, and I suspect that it's been a bit embellished by the myth-makers of family history, he didn't mind spending a few dimes on good causes. One such cause was St. Dominic's annual Fall Festival.

As should be expected at a large party celebrating autumn, among the games and spinning wheels was a turkey booth. You pick a number, you put your money or ticket on that number, the wheel is spun, and should that number come up, you have the entree for your Thanksgiving feast. Amos approached the booth, selected some number not 13 (he was also superstitious, remember?), and waited for the spin of the wheel. He anticipated nothing, but lo and behold, won a turkey on that first try.

Now, two things were at work that day. Amos was genuinely there to support the Church. But then, he also knew his reputation. He figured he couldn't just walk away with the bird. So he played a second time with a second number (still not 13). He won another turkey.

Then a third one.

And finally, a fourth one.

You may rest assured that Amos spread his largesse. He gave away three of the four turkeys. I've no doubt also that he made his way around the school gymnasium and spent his share of hard earned dollars to help old St. Dominic. But to hear me Pops tell it, the look on his face, the sheer mortification at winning four turkeys in a row at a charitable event, was priceless.

Burnin' Gas

This is going to be one of those entries which probably isn't as funny as I think it is, especially as I didn't witness the joke. Still, I'll give it the old college try. After all, I did graduate from an old college.

I went to work early this morning to get a machine done for a fella who wanted it five days from yesterday (let's see how quick he actually gets to the Shop for it) and as I was leaving to come home for a bit the guy across the alley was trying to get his old van started. This he managed, but boy, was that thing burning gas. You could smell it, strong and engulfing the air all around. It was an odor I hadn't come across in years. Since back when we had a couple hundred old Hobart welders in fact. The smell of a motor burning too much gas is one you remember.

Anyway, it reminded me of a time when old Amos Sheffield was working for me Grandpa Joe. Joe sent Amos out to pick up a gas drive, a welder powered by a gasoline engine. When Amos got to the job site he himself smelled that smell. He knew the Hobart would need work once back at the old barn.

The foreman sauntered over to Amos as he hitched up the machine to his vehicle (a car, because Joe at the time didn't believe in pickup trucks) and remarked, "The old girl worked pretty well, but it sure was burnin' gas."

"What?" Amos asked incredulously. "You got one of our machines to burn gas? How'd you manage that? I gotta let Joe know about it. I can't believe you made one of our welders burn gas," and on and on, as me Pops would tell it, until the foreman finally smiled and said "Get outta here," and went about his business.

Yeah, probably not that funny a story. But Pops liked it.

Zeke and Amos

I've talked about me Uncle John who we called Zeke. I talked about me Grandpa Joe's old friend Amos too. At times their paths crossed.

Zeke had once told me that Amos made the best fried chicken in the world. Uncle John loved it, and Amos apparently knew that. He would regularly offer some to me Uncle when he fixed it for dinner.

One day at the old barn Zeke reminisced about a time when he was a boy, maybe 9 or 10, where he really had a taste for that fried chicken. He tramped over Amos' apartment and quite literally begged the old man to fry it up. Amos dutifully did, not wanting to disappoint the boy. Uncle John sat there and ate ravenously, realizing about half way through that his personal chef wasn't having anything for himself.

"I was too young to realize it at the time, but it was a Sunday about Noon. Amos was hung over after Saturday night," Uncle John explained. He laughed at that. "How'd you like to have a kid bug you for food when you're sick? But he still fried it all up for me."

I think it's a cool story.

No Sale, uh, No Loan

Amos was a good friend of me Grandpa Joe. He was a good man at heart too, but like so many of us he had his foibles, his issues. Two were that he was tight and that he liked his drink. Yet he was also honest, doing his very best to be right by folk.

One day he ran into a buddy on the street, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, who remarked, "Remember you owe me $20, Amos."

"Since when do I owe you twenty bucks?" Amos demanded.

"I loaned it to you in the bar the other night," Cloyce said.

That bugged Amos. He couldn't remember borrowing the money. But he had been drinking, so maybe his memory was faulty.  And if he owed the money he had to pay it back, as right was right. Yet he couldn't imagine he actually bummed the cash.

Amos was beside himself what to do. Eventually he returned to the watering hole which was supposedly the scene of things. It happened that the guy behind the bar was the same as the night in question. "Did I get $20 off Cloyce when we were here?"

"Well, I can't say as I never saw any money change hands. But I seen Cloyce in here for years and he ain't never had no more than five bucks on him at a time," the barkeep explained.

At that revelation, Amos figured he was off the hook. Cloyce was trying to fleece him, take advantage of his drunken state and sense of honor. They never spoke again.

Staring Contest

Old Amos was tight. He was a good man yet he was very careful with his money. Consequently, me Grandpa Joe would often send Amos out to buy this or that for the welding business. He knew Amos would get him the best deal. One story me Pops liked to tell involved such an event.

I can't remember now what it was Joe wanted, but he sent Dad and Amos after it because it would take two people to handle whatever contraption he wanted to buy. Dad drove, and then simply stood back to watch Amos at work.

Amos tried every way in the world to get the seller to back down on price. He begged, he pleaded, he pointed out flaws in the machine. The guy wouldn't budge. It reached the point where Amos stopped talking and began pacing. He would pace a few steps beyond the man and then return. On his return, Dad said, Amos would stop abruptly right in front of the guy and spend a few seconds just glaring at him. Then he'd walk on, return, and do the same thing. He must have been trying to intimidate him, was all Pops could think.

After as few minutes of this, during which the seller did exchange a quizzical look at the old man, the guy finally said, "Look, just give me my price. But I'll put a lower one on the bill of sale to help you out on the sales tax."

Amos would have none of that. "Now, listen here. I want to get the best price I can out of you," he explained to the seller. "But what goes on paper is going to be right no matter what we agree to." Amos then resumed his pacing tactic.

As I recall (I wish I'd have listened more closely to Pops' stories) they eventually agreed on a price and Dad and Amos took the thing to the Shop because Joe had to have it. But I sure would have liked to have seen that battle of wills, that staring contest.

Amos Prevents Murder

I've spoke of Amos Sheffield before. He was a good friend of me Grandpa Joe. 

Old Amos was a bit of a kidder. Yet that could sometimes defuse a situation, employed rightly.

One day he was traipsing down the street in the old neighborhood and came across Ilene, who was married to a guy named Ben. Amos knew them both, so he and Ilene stopped to chat.

Turns out Ilene and Ben were on the outs. They'd had a spat, and she stormed out of the house. That's why she was trolling around herself. "He gets me so mad sometimes, I could just kill him," she said to Amos with a shaking head.

"Oh, now, that's serious stuff, killing a fella," Amos remarked. "You gotta careful about that."

"Of course, if you're serious we can get a couple of guns and see to it," he added dryly.

Ilene burst into laughter. "All right, Amos, I'll just go back home and talk to him."

"That's good thinking," concurred Amos.

Black Friday 2019

No, I'm not going to write about shopping excess or the irony of people wanting more after a day of supposing to be thankful for what they already have. I mean, it's been done by others. And by me. A lot. Or at least enough. In fact I have three other ideas for today, so I'll throw them all at the wall and see what sticks.

I appreciate my son carving the turkey yesterday. I always detested that job. It's nasty, indeed just plain yucky, and is one of two things which could make me vegan if I had to do it regularly. The other is a trip to rendering plant, which I spoke about here:

https://thesublimetotheridiculous.blogspot.com/2018/10/render-under-somebody-else.html

So thanks Chuck!

Today we put up the Christmas tree and other holiday decor. It's good to have same said son and his family here to help, because it's just more fun with the kids (even if they are all in their thirties). We've long hit the remember-this-ornament-remember-that-one stage. It's more fun with more folks involved.

Number three, number three, paging idea number three...oh yeah. It was to be a remembrance of me Grandpa Joe's old friend Amos and his overabundance of Thanksgiving good luck at a Church festival years ago. But it turns I wrote about that last year. You can read about it here:

https://thesublimetotheridiculous.blogspot.com/2018/11/amoss-turkey-day.html

And now you have it: the three ideas I had to blog about today. It's kinda the written equivalent of a clip show I suppose. But people like clip shows, don't they? I know lazy writers do...