Well, it's a job

Flower growers, waste managers, controlled burners, comic, old-time waitress, guy who likes bugs

Author

By Various Authors

Publish Date

Sept. 16, 2018

Faulkner speaks matter of factly. "These are fully developed maggots, been on a body for a week. These were on a transient, found dead. (Dave Allen)

Nine years ago Andy Mauro tired of his job as an industrial economist for Copley International. (David Covey)

Soil, water, light, and money

“If you grow chrysanthemums in your garden, they’ll always bloom in the fall,” he explains. “Here we artificially manipulate them to make them bloom according to our schedule. Our biggest selling periods are Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day, National Secretary Week, Easter, Christmas, and Thanksgiving, in that order, "

By Gordon Smith, June 25, 1981 Read full article

For every article thrown away in sorrow, joy, or anger, however, there is one that is lost accidentally. (Craig Carlson)

Just filling in

“Sorry, man. I sometimes get a little carried away at the end of the day. Out there, at the landfill, I do my job, you know? But sometimes when I leave the job and look back, the working face of the site is like some kind of monster’s mouth — always hungry, it seems, and you can never feed it enough.”

Fire by design

It’s difficult not to think of air strikes as the helicopter maneuvers back and forth across the hillside, setting it afire; the substance used to ignite the brush, jellied gasoline, is similar to napalm. Suddenly a shout goes up from the people around me as a dense patch of brush catches and the fire spreads to a nearby oak tree.

By Gordon Smith, May 7, 1981 Read full article

Anything for a laugh

"My family and my old friends ridicule me, but I feel sorry for them. They see my risk taking as insanity, but I see their sanity as insanity. Striving to be normal, to be the same, to be like other people, is absolutely maniacal."

By Stephen Meyer, July 19, 1984 Read full article

It was Harvey’s Eat Shop before Tommy took it over after the war. Tommy was the bread man, and had a drive-in up in Linda Vista. (Craig Carlson)

Blue plate special

"I’ve worked at Rudford’s since 1965. Twelve years altogether — I left three times. I used to get mad at something and I'd go back and quit. Some of the girls have worked here twenty years, thirty years. It’s a pleasure to work here — you know your relief is going to be there. It’s not like some places, where they’re always short."

By Amy Chu, July 9, 1982 Read full article

Milkweed butterfly (Dave Allen)

When the fly found the cadaver

Preparing lectures, Faulkner outlined topics on endangered species, food contamination, customs importation, insect confiscation and detection at the border, pesticide law. “Then I found several articles about a woman who tried to kill her roommate with a tarantula and included that."

By Judith Moore, May 17, 1990 Read full article