No Touch
4.2.2k5

When I was in my senior year of college, on Thursdays I had an afternoon class at the so-called "Lake Front" campus and an evening class 13 miles south at the downtown "Water Tower" campus. There was a dude named Dan that had both classes with me. He had a cool last name that I forget now but better still, he had a SHITBOX 1978 Olds Cutlass that despite being held together with duct tape and was nearly rusted out was FAST and chewed up southbound Lake Shore Drive like it was nothin' at all.
He gave me a ride downtown every week and on the way we'd swill coffee, smoke cigs and shoot the shit. He was a local suburbanite and had never been West of the Mississip. I blathered on about Idaho's Snake River Canyon, Washington's Snoqualmie Falls and Hollywood's Sunset Strip Hookers, many of whom tried to tempt me on my way to/from work at Tower Video that weird summer I lived in Hollywood. Dan was a big dude, a tough dude five-ten years older than me but my stories of The Wild West kept him enraptured the entire minute thirty-five it took to drive the 13 miles.
One Thursday Dan told me he was gonna have some pals over and grill meats for Da Bears game the following Sunday and invited me to come. Suburban Chicago kinda made me itch but he said Berkeley, Illinois was so goddang close to Chicago proper that it hardly felt like da suburbss. I figured I'd give it a go.
Following Dan's directions I got to Berkeley, Illinois and figured what he said was true: The place was closer to Chicago than O'Hare. Danny grilled up some fine meats, provided a cooler full of the good stuff and we ate the meats, drank the good stuff and watched Da Bears lose. His pals were good guys too. All of 'em were childhood friends of his and were his age - a little bit older than me. They all worked - Dan had worked with them but quit to go back to school - at the World Dryer Corporation, headquartered right there in Berkeley, Illinois. I said hot-fucking-damn! I knew Berkeley, Illinois meant something to me, it's where them hand dryers are made. Here are two micro-stories about the hand dryers made in Berkeley, Illinois:

Some models have a chrome nozzle that swivels. In grade school it was fun to swivel the nozzle to point up and then fill the nozzle with water. Then hit the button and laugh as electrified water sprayed all over the room. Ha!

At the gym I dutifully go to 3x times a day ... um ... at the gym in the men's locker room, near the shower there's a wall with 4x World Dryer hand dryers on the wall. Three right next to each other in a row and one roughly two feet beneath the dryer on the far right of the row. I wondered if that one was for midgets and thought that wwas a nice thing to provide those little fuckers when I WITNESSED this dude come out of the shower and blow-dry his NADS with it. Long as I live I never want to see anything like that again.

Tonight - Sadie's Flying Elephant.

Here's tonight's: Find the Reference!

You know where KQED is?

bye-ee!

whrr ... clik!