Bedfordtimesregister.com - Remembering a co-worker who was 'different' from others

No two people are exactly alike. They are all different except that some are more different than others. We all know a quirky uncle or a special teacher or a classmate that didn't fit in or just someone who made a lasting impression.

Long ago, when I was a machine shop foreman, I got to meet and know lots of people, young and old, men and women, skilled and unskilled. One man in particular was "different." Because he looked just a little bit like Liberace, I'll call him Libby. I knew him only for a few months, but here are some of the things I remember about him.

He was from somewhere "down south" and claimed his father was a "weakling" and his mother was a highly educated, strong woman. Libby and his brother had chores assigned by their mother, one of which was to mow the lawn with a hand-powered lawn mower. Each of the boys was to do the job on alternate Saturdays so each one had every other Saturday off. Since they preferred to play together, they decided to mow the lawn every other week together. After two weeks of growth, the grass was pretty high. Even with both boys pushing, they couldn't make any progress so they rigged up a harness and one pushed while the other one pulled, but that still did not work. They ended up cutting the lawn with scissors as ordered by their "strong" mother.

As an adult, Libby married and came north to find work. He would go to the local library and look up the financial reports to find the best city to live and work in and then move there. He had something like 40 jobs in four or five years. His wife was from Mexico and spoke only Spanish while Libby spoke only English. After eight years of marriage, they had never had an argument. Their 7-year-old son spoke a mixture of Spanish and English and was having trouble with language in school.

One day, Libby's lunch consisted of nothing but eight slices of bread. He explained that was because his wife told him the day before that if he didn't go to the store, there would be no lunch meat for his sandwiches the following day. On the day after that all he had for lunch was several slices of lunch meat. No bread. When the guys questioned that, he said he had eaten the bread the day before.

There was a time he asked if it would be okay for him to submit some ideas to the company engineering department. His ideas were automobile related and the company's business was also related to automobiles so he expected perhaps to get some royalties from his inventions. He had some neatly done sketches for "emergency brake systems." One would fire a stake connected to the car by a short cable into the roadway, which would stop the car when it reached the end of the cable. Another invention would drop a kind of plow from underneath the car into the roadway to stop the car.

One of the best jobs he ever had required him to report for work and wait to be called. Then he was given a package and told to take it out behind the building and put it on a concrete platform. He was paid $5 every time he did that. That was easy money. When I questioned him about that, he didn't know what was in the package, why the person who gave him the package didn't take it out there himself, what happened to the package after he put it there or what kind of business the company was in. When I asked if there were any men around when he put the package in place, he said there were and that they were hiding behind a concrete wall.

He told about a contest he once entered somewhere out west that was sponsored by a shoe manufacturing company. Over a period of several days, contestants were to walk a set distance each day and the one with the shortest overall time was the winner. Libby didn't get first prize, but he did win a prize for having the biggest blisters on his feet.

Another time, he didn't have anything for lunch. Nothing. He had built his own toolbox out of a piece of three-quarter inch plywood. When he couldn't find green felt to line the drawers, he bought green velvet which his wife took from him because it was too nice for a toolbox. Since he couldn't carry the toolbox and his lunch on the bus, he left the lunch at home. When asked why he didn't put the lunch inside the toolbox, he said he hadn't thought of that.

I remember how kind and polite he was, but he seemed to not quite get the point of things. He was just different.