Post #360602 by Cammo on Mon, Feb 11, 2008 6:26 PM

Happy Birthday you Cruddy Billy!

Just for you, here's the absolutely true story of . . .

Roscoe’s Perfect Job

Roscoe had disappeared. Nobody seemed to have talked to him for a really long time. I used to get regular emails from him, he’s one of those footloose guys who use library computers, but nothing had come back for almost a year. It was spring, which was when Roscoe usually called, hinting about coming to visit us and staying for weeks at a time. We were getting nervous.

One year he had come and wanted to go camping. I kept explaining that I had work to do and just could not go out into the woods with him. He kept at it and finally I got mad and drove him to the grocery store, told him to buy some grub, and then dropped him at a campsite outside Julian. He called a few days later, explaining that he had somehow lost his wallet, all his food, and apologized for wrecking the sleeping bag I had also leant him. The Park Ranger had taken pity on him and he had been living at the Ranger’s home for the last three nights, laughing it up, watching football and drinking beer with the guy.

This pattern would be repeated over and over with Roscoe.

So when he disappeared at first I didn’t worry too much. He always turned up. His great love of hockey, beer and Pearl Drums always controlled every aspect of his life. It probably had something to do with them.

But all through last spring there was no word. Finally it got so aggravating I took the ultimate step and called his Mom.

His Mom is the very proper, socially conscious wife of the town surgeon. She looks and acts exactly like Martha Stewart as long as you don’t ask her questions about her son. Then she gets nervous and evasive and it’s really embarrassing.

So I called her. There was a slight chance he was living back at home. Everybody knew you weren’t supposed to ask her direct questions about Roscoe. It wasn’t done. But I asked her right out –
“Hi. This is Cam. Can I talk to Roscoe?”
There was a pause. Just for a moment.
“No,” she answered, “he isn’t here.”
“Oh,” I plunged in, “Is he living there now? I haven’t heard from him for quite a while.”
“No, he’s at the studio.”
What the….?
“The studio? Is there a phone there? I’d like to talk to him.”
Now these all seem like pretty normal questions, right? To anybody else this would be a relaxing conversation. But Roscoe’s Mom’s voice was screwed up tight with terror at this point. She had gone up two octaves and was biting off the words like I was twisting a corkscrew into her knee.

“No. There’s… no phone there… I’ll tell him… you CALLED.”
“Thanks.” I hung up. Whew!

The studio? What the heck was the STUDIO? It had an intentionally hazy quality to it. Could mean anything.

I had a creepy feeling, so I called my Mom next. Son of a GUN she actually knew what was going on; turns out everybody in town did. Roscoe was working at a microbrewery, “Wheatfield Ale” right down the road. He seemed to be living there. I told her all about the ‘studio’ and she said sometimes you called a 1-room apartment a ‘studio’.

I decided to give Roscoe one last email chance to get back to me, and sent him one saying that I had called his MOM and asked her what was going on. That ought to scare him a bit.

He responded in about 4 hours, his email giving me a number I could call him at and telling me that he was working in town making beer, that it was the greatest job in the world, and please don’t call his Mom anymore. He didn’t want anybody to know what he was doing. Not because he was ashamed. Because he was paranoid that other people would want his job and KILL him to get it.

“You’re kidding,” I said to him on the phone that night, “what’s so great about a job making beer?”
“You don’t understand, Cam. You know how they make beer? You know how hard it is?”
“Uh, no. It’s hard?”
“No Cam it’s EASY! You just dump everything into a big pot, stir it once a day and let it sit there. That’s it.”
“I thought it was complicated.”
“Hell no! You don’t do anything! Then you just tap a mug-full once in a while and see when it’s ready.”
“So they’re paying you to do nothing but drink a beer once a day.”
“Yeah, I’m the tester. When I get drunk it’s ready.”

Now you might think that’s a pretty good job, but somehow it got better in stages. Roscoe would actually call me once a week now with updates.

“My boss Jim owns a junior-A hockey team and I go to the games every day. I might play forward in practices in the fall. On of the kids on the team is the grandson of Gordie Howe. I saw Gordie last week.”

And next week –
“My boss Jim is a band nut. He wants to turn the back room into a music store. I’ll handle drum sales, and still get to test the beer. And play hockey.”

And his description of where he was living –
“I live for free in the cottage that’s next to the brewery. It has a view of the bay and a porch. And a grill out front. I grill all my food, it goes great with the beer.”

But it got better and better – I thought he was lying but he was so covert about this stuff it must have been the truth –

“My boss Jim has a fishing boat and he wants it kept clean and gassed up so I go fishing every morning and I just caught a five pound bass down by Hanson’s Reach!”

But the best was right at the start of last summer. He called me up and almost yelled at me –

“I GOT THE PERFECT JOB! It’s the greatest job! Don’t tell anybody!”

“Settle down, Roscoe, what’s up? What happened?”

He caught his breath, then – “We made a documentary on beer. Well, the CBC did, you know, and they picked us as the best microbrewery on the East Coast! The CBC came down here last Saturday and did a tour of our place, filmed the whole thing, and went through the whole beer making process step by step. How to make a batch. But Cam, it wasn’t a real batch. We just faked it for the cameras. And we didn’t get sales tax permission for it.”

“What’s that?”

“They tax a batch of beer when it’s made. Even before you sell it. This one we got permission from the tax board to make but not to sell. It took some doing. We had to show them the CBC contract and everything. They finally believed us. But we can’t sell it, see? And we gotta get rid of it!”

I’m not the smartest guy, but he was starting to make sense now.

“So guess how you get rid of beer? You can’t dump it. It pollutes the lake. You can’t flush it, you can’t just throw it on the ground. And we can’t sell it, it’s illegal! My boss Jim doesn’t want people knowing exactly where the brewery is, so he can’t really have a party and give the stuff away. The tax people won’t even let him do that anyway, it’s advertising and bingo they’ll tax it.”

“So..”

“So guess what my job is this summer! Guess!”

“You have to drink it.”

“YUP! All 500 liters! And I’m ready! I got my chair all set up with a view of the bay and my big mug, that big one with the Calgary Stampede logo on the side! I got it all worked out. Ten liters a day should put me right into August.”

“Ten liters a DAY?”

“Yeah, no problem.”

“Roscoe, the part I hate about this is I was planning on going there this summer but I switched plans last week.”
“Oh,” his voice sounded real sorry, “that’s too bad. My boss Jim would have paid you too.”