The Licking Machine

When you’re snowed in, you have a lot of time to reflect on things. My mind takes me back a long time ago when Charles and I were doing a lot of mailouts. The worse thing we had to do was sealing the envelopes. He told me that there was some sort of ceramic wheel we could buy. We went to T. H. Payne downtown (now you know it was a long time ago) and every other place we could think of. I’m pretty sure it was before Office Depot and some of the office supply places we depend on today Every where we went, no one understood what we were looking for. Charles had described it as best that he could. He didn’t know the proper name for it. Well, we had just about given up when we passed by Brainerd Village. Charles whipped into the parking lot and said he wanted to see if Lanham’s Bible Book Store would have it. I told him that I was tired of looking and I would wait in the car. In a few minutes he came back out looking a little strange. I asked him what had happened. He said he thought he had said the wrong thing in the book store. I asked him what on earth he could have said in there. He said, “Well, there was a counter over in the bridal part of the store and he asked if they had a ‘licking machine.’” He said the lady looked at him and said very abruptly, “we don’t carry anything like that in here.” Of course, I started dying laughing. I told him that this was one time I was really glad that I had stayed in the car. DR 2/12/14