Chapter Twelve
Whole Lotta Love
We formed a work related softball team, started a high handicapper golf team, and chased some skirts (ok, halters and short shorts). At first, Earl was a bit scared of women. I sure his looks (think the spawn of Godzilla and King Kong) pretty much scared them too. He was twenty-five and had only been on a few dates.
I, on the other hand, was of more normal earthling size. I was about five foot eleven with curly dark brown hair, penetrating brown eyes, a slightly flattened nose that seemed to widen out my lips, a compact but powerful build and a permanent look on my face that harkened back to Alfred E. Neuman’s famous motto, “What, me worry?” I had always been told that I looked kind of like that dude that was the catcher in the movie Major League (the original - which was one of the top ten greats of all time up there with Armageddon and The Hollywood Knights). Since my Asheville diet consisted of lots of soup and ramen noodles and I was crawling over miles of piping and climbing tank ladders every day, I was in the best shape of my life. So while Earl would repel, I would attract. As long as the attraction of my magnetic pole was stronger than repulsion of his (and, no, I will not stoop low enough to crack any pole jokes here), we did all right.
I pioneered the male makeover concept with Earl. If reality shows had been invented back then, I would be a millionaire today. After being turned down by three barbers and having one faint on the spot, we finally found a brave soul in Asheville that would bathe, shave and weed whack Earl. I took him to Sears for some XXXL size decent looking clothes. I taught him some surefire lines guaranteed to work one hundred percent of the time with ten percent of the women we met (not bad considering what we were working with). However, with Earl, even the simplest lines proved to be a tongue twisting challenge. I started with, “Come here often?” Of course, with Earl, that usually came out strangled and bizarre something like, “Here I come.” Even the all time cliché, “What’s your sign?” became “Do you sign?” Great with the hearing impaired set, but we didn’t run into them too much. Occasionally Earl would throw out a “You have such big beautiful blue thighs.” Instead of getting slapped he sometimes would get a return along the lines of, “Don’t be nervous you big cute cuddly teddy bear.” So, if the lighting was just right, the alcohol flowed enough to slightly alter visual perspectives, and we found a member of the opposite sex that found Earl’s English mangling amusing, we might score. Rare, but it did happen once or twice. Speaking of scoring, that leads straight into the story of how Earl met Jennifer.
Jennifer knew Earl slightly in high school. She knew who he was but thought he was sort of different and a bit terrifying. Earl graduated and went to work at the plant. Jennifer went off to get a degree at Colgate. She returned to Asheville in a rather spectacular fashion on a Chamber of Commerce type North Carolina fall day.
Our team, the “Coats of Arms” (lame name for our somewhat talented softball team), was playing the “Raleigh Rangers” in the annual Tri-State Chemical Plant Blowout. We were up by one due to another of Earl’s monumental home runs. It was the bottom of the final inning and I was pitching with two outs and the bases loaded. The batter hit a soft roller up the middle which I snagged and quickly flung to Earl at first.
“Earl! Incoming!”
The ball struck him square in the shoulder and bounced away. Normally, Earl was a very sure handed fielder. I could not remember the last time he made an error. While the ball was perfectly thrown (of course), I could see why Earl would struggle to catch it. He was standing at a ninety degree angle to the bag with his mitt by his side. He was staring into the stands like a hungry mastiff staring at a squirrel. The power of his gaze created a gravitational force that caused my head to snap in that direction. There, walking into the bleachers, was a stunningly beautiful blonde young female type creature. And she was committing a heinous crime. She was absolutely, with no sense of mercy, killing a pair of designer jeans. Suddenly everything went silent for just a moment as our entire team stared slack-jawed at this amazing sight. In fact, the Rangers stopped half way down the base paths and gazed in wide wonder. I swear that even the birds stopped singing.
The spell was shattered when someone from the stands yelled, “Stop gawking at my daughter you perverts and play or I’ll come out there and stuff your balls and bats where the sun don’t shine.” It was Will and he could back that up that threat anywhere, anytime. As Diddy had described, he was a tall all muscle scary looking ex-Marine. Thank God he was on the ‘justice for all’ side of law and order as the county sheriff. I didn’t think many men could take down Earl, but I’d put my money on Will in a dust-up. Also, thankfully, he was usually a gentle giant. Just don’t stir up his “Hulk” side. A good surefire way to turn him green and mean would be messing with his wife or daughter.
Earl recovered quickly enough from his stupor to throw the runner out at home. But he never fully recovered from that moment. He was still glassy eyed in the dugout after the game.
“That could not have been Jennifer. What happened to her? She’s a goddess.”
“Well, Earl, I guess she grew up and filled out rather nicely at college.”
“And she’s done with dental school?”
“Dental school?”
“Yeah, she went to Colgate, didn’t she?”
I think he was kidding. I hope he was kidding.
With a ton of cajoling and coaching, he finally got up the nerve to ask Victoria if it would be alright to take her daughter to lunch. One thing led to another and, well, I think Earl is more terrified of Jennifer than vice-versa these days as is the fate of any man deeply in love.
The few girls I dated were not too impressed that I lived in a rather pungent steamy small hovel (according to them) at an out of the way mysterious plant making whatzits. They were also not overly enamored with Dreamboat. When her air conditioning finally stopped putting out, my summer dates pretty much did too. So, in those early days, there were a lot of lonely nights. I filled my time by studying the blue prints and flow diagrams of the pilot plant. There was enough light in the barn at night that I could roam around and compare the drawings to the actual nuts and bolts. As I did with my initial interviews, I sought out the most experienced operators to guide me through the piping the first few times. The plant operated using a lot of high pressure, high heat and caustic chemicals. It was not a good place for the uninitiated to stumble and bumble in low light.
In the mid nineties, the pilot plant had served to prove that we (notice how Woodland Enterprises had shifted to “we” by then) could produce advanced polymers in a commercially viable way. And the Holy Grail that was the basis for the plant in the first place had been discovered (more about that later). So we shut down the pilot plant and built a real honest to God production facility. We had an old fashioned barn razing (never pass up a good pun – if there is such an animal) that included the destruction of my home. I moved into a trailer on the property and helped with the oversight of the plant construction.
MBA - Moron$ Ba$ and A$ PG Version Page 13