We have some real characters working in our Merrillville store. The sales staff is a very loose group that enjoys a good time and a good joke. They are a hardworking bunch with the customers best interest at heart. Tom Caufield (no relation to Holden), has knowledge on many subjects. Or so he would want you to believe he does. Jenny has a photographic memory and is handing customers their order before they get to the counter. Of course, everyone wants my Mom to wait on them because she just oozes love all the time. My sister Tina is the glue that holds everything together, I don't know how she does it. Then there is Jimmy McCann. Jimmy is vertically challenged, so it's only natural that jokes are always made about his height. It is kind of funny to see him sometimes trying to wait on a guy that is a good foot and a half taller than him. Jimmy takes everything in stride. I haven't seen him get angry and he has the patience of Job, even when he has the right to get angry. Jimmy has been with us about six months and he is still learning our computer system. Computers can be intimidating, especially if you don't use one all the time. Usually once a day, Jimmy will ask Tina or myself to show him something on the computer. To complicate matters we also install a different system to keep track of dry cleaning and alterations. It has different commands and instructions, so it can be confusing.
Tom was the first guy to notice that when Jimmy would have a problem at the computer that something strange would happen in the world. This summer when the weather service started talking about "El Nino" coming back earlier than normal, it was only after Jimmy had a particularly long day on the computer. Over the summer, Jimmy was unhappy with the Bears and I've been wondering why they went 4-7.
Tom pointed out one day that after Jimmy had spent a long time on the computer that massive traffic jams were being reported in Chicago. We confronted Jim about these events and if he had any relationship to these happenings. He just laughed and shrugged his shoulders. Then strange things started happening on the Russian space station . Computers quit working, solar panels worked on their own or would not work, unexplainable events and strange happenings were becoming the norm. Jimmy would be at the dry cleaning computer and would always be sneaking glances over his shoulder and type away furiously. I kept thinking to myself what strange coincidences these were.
Jimmy has a lot of "Jimmy Cagney" mannerisms. Being short like Cagney, he hunches his shoulders a lot and since he was born on the south side of Chicago, he does have a little "tough guy" in him. That's why I think computers are a little strange to him and sometimes he's into screens that don't make sense. Tom would keep telling me that he thought Jimmy was communicating with the Russian space station. He said every time Jimmy was at the computer that their solar shields would open. I told Tom he was nuts, there was no way that anybody but NASA could reach them. So I thought. As things started going wrong on the space station, I watched the events with a renewed interest. I also started watching to see if there really was any connection between our computers and when Jimmy was operating them. I really didn't see anything that connected the two. I put it out of my mind. Things started to go wrong on the Russian space station again. On the day before the American astronaut was about to take off, I came around the corner while I was in the store and Jimmy was at the dry cleaning computer. He talks to himself as he types and I heard him saying, "Don't worry comrades. We are on our way." The legend of Jimmy lives on. Until ……….later Ciao
Fred Cicco