A quick congratulations to Angela and Jeff Thornsberry from Wisconsin, who purchased a chance to dine al fresco with yours truly and won. Jeff destroyed his cheeseburger in short order, and Angela made quick work of her enchilada, along with a mojito, or two. Tonight, they’ll be attending Pageant of the Masters, along with me and the mikeroweWORKS gang.
Speaking of mikeroweWORKS, I’m pleased to report that this particular fundraiser brought in around $200,000, all of which will go toward our next round of work ethic scholarships. Many thanks to all who participated, and to Prizeo for putting it together.
Jeff and Angela, incidentally, were terrific lunch companions. After 28 years of marriage, Jeff is about to retire from a long career in America’s prisons and penitentiaries. (As a guard, not a resident.) Angela works for Bakebush, a family run company that sells chicken, and is currently celebrating their 100th year in business. We discussed a variety of topics, including my various forays into the poultry world. There wasn’t much I could tell Angela about chicken that she didn’t already know, including the strange business of “chick sexing,” made famous on Dirty Jobs back in Season 2.
As I described the process of squeezing the poop out of newborn chicks into an empty coffee can and then peering into their rectums to see if they were pullets or cockerels, I noticed the kids at the next table were pretending not to listen but hanging onto every word. And then, when I reflected on the fact that pullets were shipped through the US mail to buyers all over the country, while ninety percent of the cockerels were fed into a grinder at the end of every day and turned into chicken food, one of the kids slowly pushed his chicken nuggets toward the middle of the table.
When Jeff asked me about my dirtiest job ever, I recalled one of my favorite segments in great detail, talking just loudly enough for the kids alongside us to hear. I was describing the business of “flensing,” whereby the flesh is carved away from the skull of a severed head, and how the whole preparation process is facilitated in order to provide medical schools with real, human skulls. When I got to the part whereby the brains were sucked from the cranium with the help of a common vacuum cleaner and a special attachment, the kid with the uneaten chicken excused himself.
Jeff, not to be outdone, proceeded to share a few of his many misadventures in the wild and wooly world of Corrections, beginning with the unsavory business of searching “prison purses.” A prison purse is the polite term for one of two hiding places inside the human body, whereby male and female convicts will conceal a surprising variety of manmade objects that should never, ever, be forced into a cavity that was not designed for long or short-term storage. Over coffee, Jeff walked me through his extraordinary encounter with an inmate who had hidden a knife in his “prison purse,” and the havoc that ensued when he attempted to remove it. It was a terrific tale, that compelled the mother at the adjoining table to ask for the check.
Anyway, it was another memorable lunch by the sea – especially for two kids who had the pleasure of dining next to the Dirty Jobs Guy and his new friends.