The Road Warrior Chronicles Ch. 01

"Hey darling, I'll have a mushroom omelet, a bowl of mushroom soup and a side of mushrooms"

When he orders that, George is pretty much wasted and it was going to be more than difficult to get rid of him.

Watching Jim, he was more than pissed; you could almost imagine the steam pouring from his ears. The women were also more than agitated; their rustling in the seats gave plenty of body language that they were unhappy. George was oblivious to anything, he started again with crude comments and bad jokes, but when he alluded to who was going to bed with who, the women had enough and excused themselves as if going to the bathroom.

When they were out of earshot, Jim went berserk, accusing George of horrendous crimes and blowing his opportunity. Again, George was to far gone, drunk wise to make any sense of his blunder. We implored him to leave and we would cover his food, but he wouldn't budge. I in turn noticed the women leave the restroom and instead of heading back to the table, head to the exit.

Jumping up I caught up with them outside and begged them to come back in. They were adamant on calling it a night but did leave their numbers with me. Failing to persuade them to come back inside, they left and I went back inside to find both Jim and George almost in a fistfight. The manager asked us to leave or else the police would be called, both Jim and I did.

For the several years that Jim worked for our sister company, he never talked to George again, and George could never understand why.

Another episode was during another convention, Ace Hardware, again in the Dallas area. We were pretty much beat after everyday, but we decided to go out the last evening after teardown of our booth. I was planning to head home in the morning along with another salesman that had come in to help.

We had been out drinking, George unsuccessful in his pickup efforts, got so wasted that he could not drive home. So about 2am we leave his car in the lot and head to his house with the intent to drop him off; his wife could drive him to pick up his car in the morning.

Once at his house he wants to drink further and play some cards. With the other guy and me driving home in the morning, this is the last thing we want or need to do. Plus the fact his wife was asleep, down the hall. Then out of the blue George talks about a porn movie he has (VHS) with John Wadd (Holmes) that we need to see. I told him we had no interest in seeing a porn movie at this hour, plus the fact his wife was down the hall. He wouldn't hear of it and hands me the tape and tells me to queue it up, he was going to wake his wife up to join us. We couldn't believe our ears and as soon as he was down the hall, I was double timing it out of his house with our colleague on my heels.

The ride back to the hotel was one of disbelief that George expected us to sit thru a porno with his wife there.

After George left the company, I kept up with his whereabouts for a couple years and then lost track of him. I don't know if he is still alive, he would be about 70 now, but based on his lifestyle and habits, I would not bet that he is.

Next up Larry, if there's interest to continue...