The downtown restaurant job.

One of the neat thing about living in a small trailer is that I could simply move anytime I felt like it. Sometimes I would move it to a construction site if I was working there. It made it easy to get to work and I could prepare a hot lunch or keep things cold. It had both a propane stove and refrigerator.

I was working on a job once when someone fairly well dressed appeared and introduced himself as the local OSHA inspector. We were doing nothing wrong, he explained. He just wanted to make what he called a contact report.

He asked my name. I gave it to him.

Then he asked me my address and I told him I didn’t have one. He looked stunned. I pointed to the trailer and told him I lived in it and parked it in a different place every night.

He suggested that perhaps he could put down ‘General Delivery’ and I told him it would likely be returned because I hadn’t been to the post office in months.

Then he asked me how I addressed my tax returns and I told him I left the address blank but filled in everything else. His eyes opened wide and he asked what would happen if the IRS wanted me. I shrugged and told him they’d probably just have to get the FBI to track me down. He shook his head.

He looked at one of the other guys and called him over. He had given up on me and was looking for a softer target.

He asked the man his name and the guy said he was John W. Lewinski and spelled it out for him. Then the Osha man asked him his address and he triumphantly pointer to the pickup with a camper on it that was parked next to my trailer.

“I’m Piccolo’s next door neighbor,” he announced.

The OSHA man caved in then and there and started laughing. He asked us what we were doing at 7 that night because he wanted to buy us a drink and hear about how two guys could go through life without an address.

We had a pretty good time together and I told him that in the future I’d use a friend’s PO box so as to make it easy for him to do his job.

He was good to his word and for the rest of the time I lived in Kodiak he was always someone I enjoyed running into.

He’s gone now. I just read where he died of cancer in April, 2014.

To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY