Parker and Geary, San Francisco, 1985: Jill was my inamorata when I lived in Dallas, selling answering service equipment for StarTel. She’d been shocked when I said I wasn’t divorced yet, just certain that I was just playing her.

Standing there in her house, I dialed Network Answering Service and got Lori on the line. “Hi, Lori,” I said, “I’ve been seeing this woman named Jill, and she thinks that since we don’t have a divorce, maybe we’ll be getting back together. This worries her. Would you reassure her?”

Jill was making desparate No, No! gestures, but I forced the phone into her hand and moved it up to her ear.

“Hello?” she said.

I couldn’t hear what Lori said, but as Jill listened, the worry lines faded from her face. The women finished their talk. And that was that.

Probably because of this reassurance, Jill came with me on my next visit to San Francisco. And that’s where we saw it.

Our office at Network Answering Service is on the upper floor of a flat on the corner of Parker Street and Geary Boulevard. Geary Boulevard is quite large, and from our windows, I’ve seen the Pope in his gold-plated Mercedes Pope-Mobile,I’ve waved to Queen Elizabeth, and then shot the bird at President Reagan, coming close to being shot myself by the secret servicemen riding outside the limosine.

Directly across from our office was Wherehouse Records, with Mel’s Diner to the right, and the Post Office on the next block. I used to hide the secret key to our office in a magnetic holder just inside the air-conditioning vents on the Wherehouse Records store. Don’t look for it now, though. It’s probably gone.

Jill had wanted to see our office, so we’d parked up the street on Parker. She parked the car, and I chided her for parking in the middle of two parking places.

“But that’s just courteous,” she said. “So the other cars can get out easily.”

“Not in San Francisco,” I said. “Where parking spots are hard to find, using two is rude.”

“Oh,” she said, and moved the car.

After visiting the office where she met Lori and the two of them made nice for a while, we returned to the car, and drove slowly up toward the intersection of Geary. When we got there, we stopped behind a light-colored Chevrolet at the red light. The cars on Geary were flying past; it’s always a long wait at that light.

As we waited, the guy driving the Chevy ahead of us opened his car door and leaned out. He seemed to be trying to look under his own car, and he twisted this way and that way, and this looked particularly stupid, and we started laughing.

At about that time, his grip on the wheel must have slipped, for he tumbled out his door onto his head, and, trying to scramble back into the car, slipped and fell again. The Chevy, still in gear, moved slowly forward and he missed the door.

The Chevy now rode over the man’s legs, and cruised slowly through the red light and across the four lanes of flying traffic on Geary. Horns, brakes, skids, and yelling ensued, while the Chevy, with the door open, cruised majestically across the boulevard toward Wherehouse Records, where it climbed the curb, heading toward the plate glass windows, but first hit the metal fireplug, popping its top and sending a geyser of water several stories tall to arch and fall upon the Geary intersection.

Cars skidded and swerved and traffic came to a halt.

Oddly, there were no accidents. Except, of course, for the man who had run over himself with his own car. Jill and I jumped from our car and ran over to the man, who was trying to get to his feet. His adrenaline was probably pumping pretty good, so I wouldn’t let him get up, but made him sit on the curb.

My operators stuck their heads from the windows above me, and I sent them to call an ambulance for our unfortunate friend. Cops appeared, and Jill and I faded.

Ah, chaos! The natural state for a human! There’s nothing like it in the universe. Or is there?

Rural Tennessee, Fall 1979: My friend Bob, who helped me start Network Answering Service, had a friend back home in Tennessee, a preacher’s son named Jeffrey.

Perhaps being a preacher’s son bestows a mantle of lawlessness on young males, for it certainly happened that way with Jeffrey. At age 19, Jeff and a younger friend, whom we’ll call Doug, were in full bloom as young criminals.

Somehow they’d found a set of keys. That was how they got the money.

This set of keys opened all the Coca-Cola machines in southern Tennessee. What a find!

Jeff and Doug lived in genteel poverty in a rural shack, and in the evening they’d cruise the highways and backroads in Jeff’s battered VW bus, looking for coke machines. When nobody was looking, open popped the coke machine door, out into a sack poured handfuls of coins, and off went Jeff and Doug to buy drugs. Serious drugs. Injectable drugs.

Until one evening, when cruising a backroad, Jeff spotted a cop car coming toward them down the road. Immediately Doug called out, for the cops were behind them as well. Holding the sack of coins and the keys seemed unwise just then, so in their VW bus they took off.

The cops gave chase.

At the first opportunity, Doug threw the coins and the keys from the van, but it did no good at all. The cops easily caught the boys, and had seen the keys flying, so the evidence and the boys went to jail.

Jeff, being a personable guy, was immediately invited by the resident jailbirds to go along on a jailbreak arranged for that very night, because the other prisoners had completed an arduous task only that day. A hole had been cut to the roof.

Under cover of darkness, Jeff and Doug and 28 other prisoners snaked up to the roof and slithered down the outside wall, and were off into the woods. Under the shelter of the woods, Jeff stopped Doug.

“Wait a minute,” Jeff said. “You’re a minor. Your father’s going to be here to pick you up tomorrow morning. You’re crazy to break out. You’ll get off anyway.”

Doug considered. Jeff was right.

The two boys sneaked back to the wall, and Jeff helped Doug break back into the jail. They said their good-byes, and Jeff took off. He couldn’t find the other 28 prisioners, which was just as well, for the lot of them went to a bar where they got roaring drunk and were corralled with ease next morning by the sherrif’s deputies.

Jeff, on his own, hiked through the night and, tapping on a friend’s window in the wee hours, arranged immediate transportation, in another VW van. Through the night they drove, and all the next day, arriving at Bob’s front door in San Francisco, where they spent the night in sleeping bags upon the floor.

But before they slept, wired by the experience, they stayed up all hours playing guitars and singing. So it wasn’t unexpected that Bob’s nazi roommate Greg, the apartment’s leaseholder, threw them out the next day.

Jeff’s driver returned to Tennessee. Jeff found another place to stay, and, being a skilled carpenter, found odd jobs. I hired him to make the worktable for Operators at our new location on Geary Boulevard. I’d drawn up plans, and being documentation-crazy, made him promise to return the plans. He lost them of course.

I lost track of Jeff, and the table plans, but it seems he moved to Southern California and went straight. He got married and began a family. Because he was an escaped felon, however, he couldn’t get a California driver’s license, and so it was a matter of time that some years later he got pulled over by the highway patrol, who somehow learned by immediate radio that he was a wanted man in Tennessee.

Jeff spent the night in jail. No breaking out this time.

In the morning, the Highway Patrol got through to Tennessee, to let them know they had the fugitive in hand. But Tennessee said that they didn’t want him any more.

“Jeff,” said the watch commander. “We’re sorry for the inconvenience. They don’t want you.”

Jeff stared. The officer nodded.

“You’re free to go.”

Contoocook, New Hampshire, Winter’s Night, 1958: On the full moon nights, by 8 pm on a snow-laden evening, the countryside was bright and clear at the big hill behind Barnard’s farm.

The fathers took the children tobogganing down the big hill in the moonlight, and the bright ice-laden snow twinkled like diamonds beneath the moon. Adrienne was nine, bundled up so snug with her stylish earmuffs.

Beside the dark woods, down the clear-lit hill upon their bucking toboggans, the children would glide, crying out in pleasure at the speed and the ghostly light, breath in clouds, their voices thin in the chill air.

And then they saw the wolves.

Three wolves stood at the verge of the trees, gazing down upon the children upon the slope, upon the fathers above, at the speeding toboggans.

The toboggans stopped. The children watched the wolves. The wolves watched the children. All was silent.

“Come, children,” said Adrienne’s father. “It’s best we went back to town.” There was no argument.

In a close group, the fathers and the children departed, drawing toboggans behind. The wolves silently watched them depart.

You may recall my friend Bob who started Bob’s Typing Service sort of as an accident. I suppose that, typing and typing, you just look at words a lot, but Bob became quite expert as a proof-reader.

In fact, once he moved away into the mountains, he sold the typing business and now operates TypoFinders proof-reading service, on the internet, using a simple website that I designed for him one afternoon. With an internet connected laptop, he works from his mountaintop home these days.

I was thinking of him because he sent me a few typos last week. Just as I collect quotes, Bob collects typos. Here are a few for your enjoyment —

We proudly feature some-day shipping.

Sign up now for our Beauty and Fitness Curse.

“This house features an enormous dick, suitable for entertaining or just enjoying the view.”

Want more? Visit the typo gallery at TypoFinders!

San Francisco, 1982: A few years before I met Adrienne, she was dining in San Francisco, at a swank place on Nob Hill called Julius Castle, which is mentioned in one of the Sam Spade mysteries from the 1940’s, so I guess the restaurant’s been there for a while.

Adrienne and her escort decided to try wild boar, a special on the menu. The dinner seemed all right.

But that night …

Adrienne was deep asleep.

Slowly and vaguely, a frightful dream crept over her. A dream of fear. In a dark forest, a terror in her heart. Being chased by … something.

Running and running and running, scrambling through the underbrush, trying to get away. To no avail.

A sharp terror, a pain so intense …

She awoke with an awful feeling in her blood. She’d been the boar; she’d been chased; she’d been killed, and eaten.

On that day, Adrienne became a vegetarian.

I’m not a vegetarian, myself. But then, I’ve never been chased, killed, and eaten.

Late 14th Century, China: Three students decided that, for spiritual purposes, they would take a Vow of Silence. It was only for the weekend, but they felt sure it would help them.

Meeting at the the first student’s home, they silently meditated during the morning and the afternoon. In the late afternoon, first student as their host gestured for a servant to bring tea.

The servant brought the tea, but spilt it. “Clumsy!” exclaimed the first student.

“You spoke!” said the second.

“I am the only one who has not spoken,” said the third.

San Francisco, August 1975: I’d had a fling with Linda, whom I met in a therapy group, pleasant enough, but when she and her daughter emigrated to Australia, they asked me to keep the cat.

I liked the cat. Big orange tomcat named Froggie. I’m guessing that the child named it. My only worry was that Froggie was an outdoor cat, and my apartment a block off Geary Boulevard wasn’t the safest place.

Still, I agreed, and Froggie came to live with me. For a while.

In the apartment building at 495 Third Avenue, there’s a front door with mailboxes, and the stairs lead upward from the tiny lobby. All the downstairs is garages, plus the trash room.

The trash room was serviced by a second set of stairs, descending around a trash chute. In other words, from my hallway on the first floor up, I could step through the frosted glass door, and drop my trash to fall down the chute to the vast bin hidden in the trash room.

From the trash room, Froggie could escape to the fabled interior. You see, in San Francisco, all the victorian buildings are built shoulder to shoulder, meaning no side yards. And these houses are built with their fancy faces right on the street, meaning no front yards.

But in back, each house has a yard, usually fenced in. And what this means is that there’s a space on the inside of every block, which is filled with all the yards. So, houses all around the outside of the block; yards all inside the block. Great for Froggie. Adventures a-plenty.

We were two batchelors, and got along fine. One evening, I was soaking in the bathtub when Froggie found me. From his point of view, I had become trapped in a vat of water. Without hesitation, with one paw he tried over and over again to get my foot out of the water. I finally had to climb out of the tub, thanking him for my rescue.

And each night, when I’d got out my futon and bedding, once I’d bedded down, Froggie would slither under the covers, next to my body, for the warmth. So that he wasn’t squashed, he knew a trick.

He slept with his feet toward me. If, during the night, I rolled over onto his feet, then, without bothering to move, he just unsheathed his claws. Lying upon claws, uncomfortable, I’d roll back off his feet. Worked for him. Worked for me.

In the morning after breakfast, in the hallway, I’d open the frosted-glass door. He would make his way down the back stairs and out into adventureland in the center of the block. Toward days end, hungry, he’d climb the back stairs and squeek behind the frosted-glass door till I let him in.

At that time I was studying magic and meditation, living very cheaply and reading a lot. I made frequent jaunts to the metaphysical bookstore, and on this particular day I came home bearing a little flyer, which told all about how some mysterious guys called the White Brotherhood were watching the world from the Astral Plane, and helping it along.

I’d walked up the stairs to my floor, but for some reason did not go into my apartment, but rather sat on the stairs, reading this little brochure. As I sat there, I heard Froggie squeek, and so I got up to open the frosted-glass door and let him in.

But he wasn’t there.

Odd.

I went back to reading, sitting on the stairs, and while I was mulling over this White Brotherhood thing, an older lady from the buiding came up to me, with a sad expression.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. It seems that my cat, Froggie, had been hit by a car. She’d brought him in, she said. He was lying, on a towel, just inside the front door.

I ran down to the lobby. There, to the side of the door, was Froggie, very still and quiet. On my way into the building, I had walked past him, unknowing, as he lay dying.

I assume that the squeek I’d heard was his last. Unless the lady was right. She said he’d died on the street, before I came home. But I know, in my heart, that I heard him.

Was he calling to me, to come and help him?

Or was he saying good-bye?

This is a simple law of nature, but one which is very handy:

Every Business has One of Four Problems: Employees, Capital, Machinery, or Inventory

That’s it.

Some businesses have more than one of these problems. Problems aren’t necessarily bad, but the problems do need good solutions if the enterprise is to flourish. If mismanaged, employees will shipwreck you. So will mismanaging your capital, machinery, or inventory.

It’s something to consider when planning a business venture. If you can solve these problems, and if you can locate customers and market successfully to them, the business might do very well. There’s more to life than running a business, but a business can be a good way to finance your life, and lots of people enjoy the challenge.

The astute reader will say, “Oh, but what about personal services businesses?” For example, dogwalkers and bookkeepers and barbers and lawyers. These businesses do not necessarily require any significant amounts of employees, nor capital, nor machinery, nor inventory.

In these cases, you are selling your time, and time is the only commodity in the entire universe which is absolutely limited to you. You are not obtaining the leverage afforded by employees, capital, machinery, or inventory, so in this case the best plan is to (a) earn a lot of money for your time, relative to your needs; (b) enjoy the thing you are doing; and (c) stash away and invest for a rainy day.

Knowing this important secret of the universe, go forth and prosper.