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Notes from the Doghouse
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Sam: Several people have asked me if we’re brothers. I told them no, but we’ve known each other a long time.
Kermit: I remember the day we met at Gem Fuel Co. in Boise and you came in looking for a job. We shook hands and became instant friends.
Sam: We laughed at some things that happened and they drew us closer. Like the time you had to stay late, waiting for me to get back with the truck from Farewell Bend, Ore. I was carrying a load of VP Racing fuel and methanol.
Kermit: You came in and yelled, “The truck’s on fire!”
Sam: You grabbed the fire extinguisher and emptied it on the wheel but it was still smoking and flames began shooting out again.
Kermit: I was on red alert by this time because of what was in the area.
Sam: We were just a half a block from those big fuel tanks at Morris Hill and Curtis Road. If those barrels of fuel went in the back of the truck, the whole neighborhood would have gone up in flames. That’s when you grabbed a hose and watered the wheel and axle down. The vice-president of the company chewed us out. He said, “My god, why did you use a hose? You ruined a perfectly good spindle.”
Kermit: You don’t know how bad I wanted to ask him that if it was so good, why had it burst into flames.
Sam: I wanted to ask him if he’d preferred that we had let the whole thing explode.
Kermit: Then there was the time in Notus, Id. when I was telling you how the bees loved our great big yellow truck.
Sam: I thought you were pulling my leg, telling me they thought it was a huge flower.
Kermit: They don’t know the difference until they get really
close to it.
Sam: I found that out the hard way. I went back to the truck to drive it off and when I plopped down in the driver’s seat, I sat on a bunch of yellow jackets. It hurt so bad I couldn’t sit down or walk.
Kermit: You had to stand up in the back of the truck all the way back to Boise. And you asked me if I thought you could get Workman’s Comp for it. I answered, “Only if you miss three days in a row, that’s their rule, you know.”
The third funny thing that really made us friends was when my (now) ex-wife and I came over to visit you right after that.
Sam: You introduced yourself to my wife as Kermit and your ex said, with a straight face, “But I’m NOT Miss Piggy.”
Kermit: I thought your wife was going to die laughing.
Sam: That was the day you came over to help me gather all the branches I’d cut from my trees and bushes and loaded them into the back of my pickup.
Kermit: I thought you had way more than the pickup would hold and you asked me how we could pack them down so you could get more into it. I volunteered to crawl up on top of the cab and jump onto the pile to tamp it down.
Sam: I didn’t know whether you were half cat or half frog. The way you jumped up in the air and came down on those branches wasn’t half as exciting as the way they sprang back and threw you up into the air. You fell onto the ground from about 15 feet in the air and I thought you were dead. But you just got up like nothing had happened, brushed yourself off and said, “I don’t think I can pack them down any more.”
Kermit: The real excitement came on the way to the dump.
Sam: We stopped at an old gas station and while you filled up with gas, I went into the restroom.
Kermit: I thought you had fallen in, from the way you were yelling.
Sam: As I was about to sit down on the toilet, I saw the jaws of a big, red-eyed rat about to chomp down on my unmentionables. Talk about being scared, I was constipated
for weeks.
KERMIT HALE AND SAM ROBINSON
Culture Writers