I don't know how long I can stand to wait.
It turns out now, thanks to no longer being a slave to a printing press, I can post my columns any time of any day or night I choose, although I guess it might be unfair to those of you who operate on a regular schedule. We're obviously going to have to come to a compromise at some point.
For decades, my life and lifestyle have been pushed around by printers. For years, when I worked for those folks down the road, I had a deadline of 9 a.m., because they were still holding on to their notion that being the only afternoon delivery paper was a good thing. That meant hitting the road about 6:30 a.m. for work. A coworker at the time frequently ended up driving alongside me for some of the journey between Angleton and Clute. She asked me one day how I was able to drive and sleep at the same time, mistaking my reclined head and my nearly closed eyes, which were at least an eighth of the way open almost three quarters of the time, as a state of unconsciousness.
I'd hit the darkroom about 7 a.m. with a first cup of scalding coffee helping to bridge the gap between dreams and the regular kind of daily working nightmare. By deadline, I'd put another seven or eight cups away. Adding those to the known effects caused by the orange light cast by the safe lights in the darkroom, which causes very aggressive behavior after prolonged exposure, it's no wonder everyone thought I was over the edge once in a while.
Come 10 a.m., it was time to switch caffeine sources, and move on to cola. It wasn't until I'd moved on to a better job that I discovered I'd become a morning coffee junkie. Deprived of those precious, endless pots of free coffee, I moved on to cola full-time.
Who knows what my average consumption per day was then--dozens of bottles, cases of cans? With as many as six deadlines a day, my life was whirling out of control, and it was hard to keep enough change in my pocket for the soda machine.
It was during that time that a past addiction also resurfaced, the dreaded double cheeseburger dysfunction. It had been briefly overcome after an overdose one day at the old Filipp's Cafe, then next to Danbury's landmark, their single blinking traffic light.
I was dutifully warned by the waitress, who obviously knew a cheeseburger junkie when she saw one. But I had to have the good stuff, a double-meat, double-cheese burger with the works. She was patient at first.
"You don't need a double," she said, smiling. We argued, more than I thought was appropriate, and I thought I'd won, as she left with a wry smile. Then she brought it out. It was the biggest double cheeseburger I'd ever seen. It was the Moby Dick of burger baskets. It must have been close to a pound of hamburger, if not more, half a block of cheese, and more French fries than three people ought to eat.
I was not just defeated, I was humbled, shamed. I almost had to resort to using a fork because it was too thick to eat like a normal sandwich. In the end, half of it was left on the plate and I was never able to look at any cheeseburger the same way again.
When I started to work in Houston, it turned out I could buy a passable double cheeseburger in the company cafeteria. It, and others like it, became a part of my regular lunch but, like Captain Ahab, I'm forever on the watch. Waiting for a waitress in some as-yet-unknown small town cafe to say once again, "You don't need a double.”
What do double cheeseburgers and coffee have to do with deadlines and printers?
Everything, of course. In the newspaper business it was difficult to develop any kind of regular schedule, so it was always easier to grab something that bad for you than to take the time to do something that would help you have a longer, healthier life.
Now that I'm shed of them, for the most part anyway, maybe I can.
I've been thinking about doing that. And thinking, and thinking …
Don't forget to drop by for The Weekly Journal Brunch from 10 a.m. until noon on Fridays at the Flying "S".
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