Jobs, Cars, and Rotten Eggs

The stories in this column are true. Averett lives a dull life in rural Southside Virginia with his wife Management, two children and a rotating assortment of goats, dogs, cats, snakes and other local fauna.

I was accused by an angry reader of never having a job and of letting Management support me. If she wants to support me and keep me for a plaything, I don’t think it is any of his business. However, he is correct. I’ve never had a job. A job is a service performed for money. I work for fun and the money is a bonus. When I get good at a project, I find another one. Nope, no job, ever.

In my single digit years, I sold blackberries, snakes, turtles, and toads. The money was good but the season was short. . As I got a little bigger, I worked on a farm. I liked the smell of hay. Forking manure was fun also and I got to sell the manure to local gardeners. Ditto the fishing worms and snakes. Not only that, shoveling manure was excellent preparation for writing this column.

By the time I was fourteen, I had saved enough money to buy a horse and an old car. The horse ran, the car didn’t. The car was a 1918 Dodge Brothers touring car and we had to cut trees before we could move it. My father paid a wrecker to bring it home. This set the tone for my relationship with vehicles for the rest of my life. Tow them home, get them running, tow them home again, fix them, tow them home… Park them in the woods. It’s worked fine like this for 35 years.

At age 16 I was employed at a local gas station. My duties were pump- ing gas, checking oil, selling snacks, soft drinks, peanuts and little foil packages that must have contained some miracle drug or charm. The label said it prevented disease and pregnancy. It was kept hidden under the counter and the customers always asked for it in a whisper. It must have worked because lots of people bought it, now that I think about it all of the customers were men. Maybe the pregnancy part didn’t work.

Then I was employed at a Grocery store. One of my duties was putting eggs in cartons. Any cracked eggs were sold at half price. One day a woman wanted a dozen cracked eggs. We were out. Being such a dedicated employee, I cracked her a dozen.

After that, the boss decided to quit selling the cracked eggs and told me to throw them behind the building. At that time, local Halloween traditions included fireworks and throwing eggs.

Starting in July, I stockpiled the cracked eggs behind the store. By Halloween, I had two large boxes full. I brought the first box to the car. Upon returning with the second box, I found my friends (?) cheerfully throwing eggs at the front of the store for me to clean up the next day.

That night we became experts on rotten eggs. Five facts exist on the properties of rotten eggs.

Fact 1: The older the egg, the lighter it is.

Fact 2: Rotten eggs explode.

Fact 3: Eggs that are stockpiled over several months have the least rotten ones on the top of the box.

Fact 4: Newton’s law: “An object in motion will stay in motion until some force acts upon it.”

Fact 5: A thrown egg travels at about 30mph, a car over 55 mph.

An egg was thrown from the moving car. Facts 1, 4, and 5 affected its trajectory. The egg came back at the car, hit the open vent window, and Fact 2 occurred causing us to drop the box of eggs. Fact 2 then occurred multiple times compounded by Fact 3.

I was just glad it wasn’t my car. I’d have parked it in the woods. I thought we would all have to live in the woods for several years, but it finally wore off us. The car never fully recovered even with a dozen Christmas tree air fresheners inside.