Owen was a quirky little guy. He was around 5’5″, rail thin, with salt and pepper hair. He always looked a bit scared, as if someone had leaped out the closet the moment before you saw him. He was married with four daughters, who all lived at home. Only a brave man could live in a house with five pre-menstrual women and be the sole breadwinner. Maybe that is why he always looked scared.

Another thing that Owen seemed to be afraid of was work. He hid around the building in nooks and crannies with a newspaper trying to avoid be handed something to work on. At lunch, or shortly after, he would walk out to the parking lot and move his car behind a neighboring company. He did this so that when he hid, with no car there to confirm his presence, everyone would think that he had gone home. He would then continue to hide out until quitting time, reading sports and current events until 5PM.

Owen got a bit of ribbing over hiding, but he was better known for being a cheapskate. He begged people’s lunch scraps, drank coffee only when the company gave it away, dug through people’s trashcans for reading material and whatever caught his eye. He often took it upon himself to eat things that had taken up residency in the fridge longer than 48 hours. His reasoning was that he “didn’t want it to go bad.” It not that the little guy wasn’t rolling in money – he made upwards of $14 an hour and had paid off his car and house. He just seemed to like ‘finding’ things.

With reading making up such a big part of Owen’s time, coupled with the fact that he would never buy his own material, people around the shop were constantly missing books and magazines. Some of Owen’s favorite things to sneak off with were my magazines. I brought in Elle, Vogue, Cosmo, anything with an estrogen theme at the time. He admitted to swiping them, but justified it by saying, “There’s more nudity in there than in a Playboy and I can’t read Playboy at work!”

Owen and Mitch had known each other for years. They had both been in the business over 25 years, and while they often were forced to work together at various locations around the area, they had always had a bit of a rivalry. Mitch was the tall, big, loud guy and Owen was the short, small, quiet guy. They complained non-stop about the other to anyone that would listen. Since I liked both of them I got to hear every little detail, too.

Yes, story telling was one of Owen’s specialties. When not in hiding, he loved telling what I dubbed ‘Owen’s True Stories’. These were often jokes that he embellished on and added personal details to, told to enthrall the listener until he could throw out the punchline. I’ll give you an example, one of my first and favorite of these anecdotes:

“The first time I had sex I was a young guy and she was even younger. We were on her farm and ran behind the barn. After a lot of kissing and such I decided to make the move. She was really into it and things were going well. Just when I was about to … you know … her mom walked around the side of the barn and stood there looking at us.”

(Insert comment here, ie. “Oh my God! What did she say?”)

“Moo.”