Claire is a former coworker of mine who I recently ran into at a bar—the bar I lived over top of 30 years ago when I moved to Baltimore. The place was owned by a pro football player back then. I remember that winter of 1981/82 being extremely cold, and with our utilities off—I think gas & electric payments were impinging on the beer fund—we were reduced to dragging railroad ties up out of the parking lot [where they were employed as car stops] and chopping them up on the living room floor to feed the fireplace, which did not have a functional flue; so if we stood up and breathed at the same time, we would die…

In any case, amid such stories of our youth, Claire related a recent harrowing one of her own that belongs in The Streets Have Eyes series. Before she gets on with her story, let me describe her as a short forty-something blonde who, decades ago, survived some brutal beatings at the hands and shoed feet of a man. She never let that slow her down and has done well in the workforce. A few years back we were working together after she had her knees replaced. Her job required her to walk up and down a long flight of stairs often. When her knees took a turn for the worse the employer added boxes of change [nickels, dimes, quarters, pennies] to her work load; I supposed to develop her hips as she gimped up the stairs.

Claire is one of those sensitive people who put up a tough front. She did not even let me know she was being ‘sandbagged’ with the coin-hauling chore so that the employer could get her off the payroll when she became totally disabled.

Overworking injured or sick employees is a venerable tradition in retail food, a practice I have fallen victim to also, when recovering from a spinal injury in my 30s.

Another coworker informed me of Claire’s fate and I came up behind her on the stairs, “You should not be carrying that. You don’t have any knees, its heavy, and this is an unsecured blind spot. No employee should haul money through here without an escort.”

She chirped over her shoulder, “No sweat boss-man, nothing a little bone-on-bone can’t take care of!” and continued up the stairs, waiving me off with a jerk of her little head as her joints creaked like loose floorboards.

So, when you read Claire’s story, keep in mind that she’s got the best tough act in town, and that fear doesn’t control her like it does most people. She also makes a point of remembering hard times. She told me at the bar last Saturday that she had saved all of my disciplinary write-ups, as they had all made her cry, and was considering framing one. She did inform me as the interview kicked off that, as a boss, I had been “‘a legendary hard-ass; Mister by the Book, jump through another hoop please!’”

“Now you’re a writer, and you care!” [laughs]

“My crack-head cousin—he says he doesn’t smoke anymore but he has COPD. He picks me up at ten in the morning for my Aunt Marge’s funeral and as soon as I get in he cracks open a Budweiser longneck.

“I said, ‘It’s nice of you to pick me up’ and he’s just driving off drinking.

“So I’m like, ‘I don’t need this shit. Tell the truth, and choose your answer carefully. Are you picking me up because you want to, or because somebody told you to?’

“He’s like, ‘Well, um, I said I was goin’ ta pick you up.’

“I said, ‘Tell the truth.’ And he said ‘Well Aunt Pat asked me to.’

“We are headed through the tunnel and this state cop pulls up and he hides the beer. After we get through the tunnel he’s chugging it and we get to the graveyard. We are at the graveyard and he’s walking around stuffing this cake in his mouth that my Aunt Alice gave him, shoving it in his mouth with the palm of his hand—what a loser. I’m standing right on my grandfather’s grave—may he rot in hell and burn for eternity! He molested me when I was a child. I should have spit on his grave.

“We get back into the car to cross back over from Glen Burnie and he is freaked about the tunnel and the cop, ‘We aren’t doin’ the tunnel Claire. We’re doin’ the bridge.’

“So we are going around these back roads looking for the bridge. Of course he has his backup beer, the can of Bud Light that he pops open from out of the glove box. He tries to beat this one light and we almost get hit, and they’re honking while we are in the intersection and I’m like, ‘Oh my God! Is this how it’s going to end?’ Then he’s got a lead foot and we are doing eighty on these side roads while he is drinking his beer.

“Besides, I knew he was on something. He says he doesn’t do drugs anymore. But he watches our elderly aunt and uncle, and dispenses their medication—Oh he’s getting his; eating perks and oxys out the ass probably.

“Now finally we are doing the bridge [The Key Bridge, which has a high apex and is shut down for wind speed occasionally.] and it is swaying—you can feel it move in the wind. And I hear this rattling. Here he has the back door [passenger side] shut incompletely and it finally comes loose behind me and its banging on the guardrail—destroying this new car. Who the car belonged to I didn’t even ask. I was yelling at him telling him to slow down and he is driving and drinking beer and reaching behind me to try and pull the door shut! Finally we make it over the bridge—whew!

“At least by this stage he is out of backup beer. We finally make it to the steak house and, guess what: the crack-head orders a beer. I thought I was never going to get home. But here I am, still kicking! There you go, a day with my family.”