Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Share your stories


Last week I had a book event at the Brown County Public Library in Green Bay. My favorite part of these events is the willingness of people to share their own stories. One of the attendees was a man in a NAPA auto parts shirt who regaled me with stories while I was autographing books. He started working in his dad's gas station at age five. It was a full-service station and he washed windows while his dad pumped gas. Since he was too short to reach the windshield, his dad rigged up a stand with an upside down five gallon pail set in a rubber tire. He would pull the pail over to a car, hop on top and squeege the windshield. Even so, he could never reach the top center of the windshield, so a little inverted dirty triangle left behind became his signature. His gleeful description of this odd contraption left me with a smile that stayed with me all the way back to Madison.

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