Pracitically every joke is practical

"While you're in town we should get together!" My friend John said with his usual ebullience. You get these invites but usually they never happen. "I'll call Mark , Scott and Peter. How about calling Richard and Ken?" "Sure !" I said. "What about my wife?" "Bring her along, we'll meet at my bar and I'll put on some snacks." It sounded great. I would love to see that old gang, or most of them anyways. Time and the tides of life had cast us adrift over a very large coastline. We had washed up on disparate shores from Toronto and B.C. to Newfoundland and the NWT. Still here we were a band of brothers brought together by virtue of having worked at the same McDonald's on Main St. in Dartmouth N.S. in the late seventies and early eighties.

It truly was a remarkable place. Perhaps a remarkable time, but we formed a bond that has stayed with many of us. I think it was the environment. The pressure of working in that high speed world. It was also that fact that our restaurant was special. We received a Triple A rating from the franchise that few restaurants could match. The building itself was old, being the first one built by the chain east of Montreal. The floors were sloped and the building was falling apart. But we kept it clean and we painted everything every year. The service was fast and we took pride in what we did. If you did something to let the side down you heard it from your coworkers before you heard it from the boss. Before you decide that I am still working for the Golden Arches, I credit the people for the success of the restaurant. They were a phenomenal bunch.

The shifts were long, the wages low, the pressure intense. You could go one of two ways. First you could let the pressure get you and quit in a huff. Or you could let off steam and have a laugh and carry on. We did carry on and we had some great times.

On the appointed night we met at the small bar that my friend John ran. It was a cheery place the walls festooned with Polaroids of patrons, a smile on every face. John was born to do this, run a bar and restaurant, he made you smile with his exuberance. We congregated at the corner table. As each arrived there were heartfelt handshakes and high fives. John jumped up and talked to customers, flitting back and forth with trays of hot wings and garlic fingers, all delicious. We had a great time and the years melted away. Once more we were back in time, sharing the moments that had forged these bonds. Once again peeling back the layers of separation, underneath the laminated layers of care and the reinforcement of laughter that had built the fiberglass of friendship so much stronger than steel. "Remember the time you made the Lard Sundae?" Richard said, more of a statement than a question. I smacked my forehead with my open palm. I had forgotten. Like so many other details, I had forgotten the minutia and remembered only the whole happy ethos of those times and that place. "Tell Lina!" Scott chimed in. "Tell us all, I would love to hear it!"

The sundae story was one of a thousand such tales I could tell. It was a relief valve. A safety feature of life in that pressure cooker. I was older than most of this group. Not much older but a year or two is a lot when you are twenty. I was the boss, or the assistant manager of their shift. I set the tone. It is not in my nature to be a tyrant. I want to keep up the standards by making those around me want it too. Keep it light, keep it positive. You get more flies with honey than vinegar. Except I didn't collect flies, I collected remarkable young people like these who did so much and did it well and did it with a smile on their face. We had fun.

I have always had a bizarre sense of humour. If we started telling stories we might never leave this place. Some jokes were one of's. Mostly there was a theme. I remember when we were all on breakfast shift. We started at 5:30 am. Breakfast set-up it was called. My friend Steve did it, he would arrive two hours after I started. I therefore had two hours to set the most diabolical traps you have ever seen. They started simple and got more complex as time passed. Once I took a pickle can. This was the size of a 2lb coffee can. I tied a string around the bottom of the can. I tied another around the top of the can. I tied the bottom to the shelf above the maintenance room door The top string I tied to the top of the door. I filled the can with ice and waited. Two hours later the ice had melted, mostly. Steve had to open the door to get his tools. When he did the string on the top and bottom of the can came taught suspending the can in mid air above Steve's head. Sending a cascade of water as cold as the glaciers down his back. At 5:30 this was a rude shock indeed. I had been doing my job when I heard "TURNBULL!" A cry I would hear many times over the years. Steve flew around the corner still dripping wet and threw a bucket of water over me. I laughed as we stood their each in our own respective puddle.

You can't leave it at that. So the following week I removed everything from the two huge cupboards over the back room sinks. I hid them in boxes in the stockroom. I filled the cupboards with water balloons made from the balloons for children's birthday parties. There were well over a hundred of them. I had to come in an hour early, but it was worth it. Steve arrived a little groggy from the party he had attended the night before. He opened the door and was positively bombarded with balloons full of cold water. "TURNBULL!" He bellowed, rounding the corner lobbing two huge balloons that had somehow survived the fall. I was soaked and laughing, so was he.

On the night shift there was a guy named Robert who drove a motorbike. He always wore leathers and looked the part, but he drove a smallish bike I think it was a 150cc. That poor bike became the bane of his existence. One night we rolled his bike into the lobby while he was on his break. I hung a handwritten sign on it that read "Buy a Big Mac get a free motorbike" when he rounded the corner from the break room he flew over the counter "Hey, that's my bike!" "Yeah and so far no takers!" I quipped. Another time we wrestled the bike into the men's bathroom and put the rear tire in the toilet of the single stall, knowing that he would have to use the washroom, before returning to his shift. "TURNBULL!" Is all I heard when he passed through the door. The piece de resistance, though was the night that I enlisted two other friends or maybe fiends to drag the bike up on the roof. We tied it to the sign on the front of the restaurant. It sat there for hours, drawing quite the crowd. Finally Rob had to do a lot pick up. He dashed back in the restaurant "Get that thing down right now!" He said. He tried to look mad but he was smiling, ear to ear.

There were thousands of other incidents too many to remember or to relate. Water balloons full of big mac sauce down jacket sleeves that had been tied off first. Shoes full of ketchup packets. Lockers rigged to propel bowls of mustard. Lots of laughs, lots of reprisals. Even our host had been a victim. He used to drive an old rust bucket. You could not unlock the doors with the key so John never locked the beast. One night we crept to where he parked his car in front of his parents place. We knew he was on the early shift The next day the boss thought we were psychic. "That'll be John." we predicted when the phone rang a few minutes before his appointed hour."Locked out of his car, eh?" "I didn't say that!" said the boss. "hey, what goes on here?" he didn't have so good a sense of humor so we didn't elaborate. on chuckling when he got to work.I would have loved to have heard his cry of "TURNBULL" We had left the window down a millimeter or two. Lots of fun. We built the bonds that still endure.

"Tell her!" Scott repeated. "I love it when you tell it!" So I told Lina and all present, most of whom had been present that night. Although I had been told that the story had become a legend and that if everyone who claimed to be there had been there there would have been standing room only. We worked with a guy I will call Stan. Stan was a nice enough guy but he had a few annoying habits. One habit was to come into the break room, grab your cigarette and "suck it out" meaning to draw so hard on it that it took all the good out of the cigarette. The other habit was to come into the break room while you were eating and "ask" if he could have some fries, a bite of your burger or a spoon full of your dessert. He always "asked" as he was scarfing down a wad of fries that would choke a hippo. Or scooping all the topping and nuts off your precious sundae. I was determined to put him in his place, once and for all. All great works of art take time. To become a legend you have to pay your dues. I started before my shift, long before Stan even got to work. I took shortening, as pure and white as driven snow. I filled a sundae cup. I took a butter knife and sculpted the perfect curl, just like the swirling crest that the soft serve ice cream machine created. "What on earth are you dong?" Ken asked his voice tinged with incredulity. "You will see, my friend, you are in the presence of the master!" I said in my best radio emcee voice. As I sculpted a small crowd formed. I heard the word shortening so I swore them all to secrecy and let them in on the purpose of my labor. Nearly all had been victims of Stan's larceny and all were rapt with glee at my scheme. I took my creation to the sundae station and added caramel sauce and peanuts. I then snapped on a lid and put it in the freezer. It was so good I had to hide it so no one save my intended victim fell into my trap. As the evening progressed I was worried that someone would spill the beans. But not a soul did. In time I went for my break. I had arranged for Stan to be asked to do a lot pick up, thus sending him past the staff room. Timing is everything. It had to be after I had eaten my burger and fries. It was text book. He dashed into the room with his usual zeal. He saw the sundae looking so inviting its' creamy head poking out through the caramel robe that covered her beautiful shoulders. She sported peanuts like diamonds. This sundae could have graced on of the posters in the lobby. Stan grabbed the sundae, as usual he would ask permission as the first mouthful descended his greedy throat. It seemed as if he slipped into slow motion. I can still see the gleeful look on his face as he scooped the entire quantity of caramel and nuts and a good healthy scoop of lard cream into his mouth. He set the cup down and half turned to leave the room. He never made it. The next thing I knew Stan was on his knees spitting cold lard into the garbage can. The entire restaurant was in pandemonium. Everyone filed past for a look. It had been so simple yet so perfect. It had relied only on one thing, human nature. Everyone around the table was laughing, including my wife who was hearing the story for the first time. We spent a wonderful evening, which, all too soon was at an end.

As had happened years before we had to go our separate ways.The old restaurant is gone, they built a new one on the site. In September of 2005 John and I both suffered heart attacks. I made it, John did not. It makes that night even more special. We all miss him. I miss his smile. I know he knew who locked his doors. He got the joke. He got that it was done because we loved him. I know too that he is up in heaven right now and he is probably planing something big. If I am lucky enough to make it there I will be watching what I eat!