I taught school for a few years and my last year teaching I babysat a Junior Hight School resource room. The class was basically a holding room for kids who were too disruptive in a regular class, but the district didn’t want to expel them since each body represented $57.64 a day. By the end of the year, I was burned out and requested a different assignment for the next year. The problem was I’m 6’4” and didn’t put up with much crap in my class and I kept good discipline. If a kid screwed up in regular classes, they would put them in my room! The school wanted me to stay with the resource room since they could put the most incorrigible kids in my class and there were no problems. I explained I needed a year off or I was going to resign and do something else with my life. They thought it was a bluff and in May of 1980 I left teaching and never looked back. For the rest of my working career, I was self-employed, and I’ve had a great life. My first business after I left teaching was making wholesale salads and processed potato items. One of the many characters I met during my career was an older gentleman who was quite the entrepreneur The gentleman’s name was Brian, Brian Stevens. However, my nickname for him was Clicker. Somewhere along the way Brian purchased a set of cheap teeth; and yes, I know that inexpensive is about the price of something whereas cheap is about the quality. I have no idea what he paid for the teeth, but I assumed they were cheap because they didn’t fit and appeared to be poor quality. The upper plate was constantly coming loose and would drop down onto the bottom plate which made a clicking sound. The teeth were so loose it was not uncommon to hear the teeth click at least once every few minutes. I think he also would push on the plate with his tongue and let it drop. But the amazing thing about Clicker was his business acumen. He had the Midas touch for finding little businesses and then making a fortune out of them. So, his problem with his teeth was not because he couldn’t afford better teeth, he was just too cheap to purchase a better set.

Clicker had a restaurant chain of a dozen places which would have probably ended up on the television show Drive-Ins, Dinners and Dives. The places except for one only served breakfast and lunch. My company supplied his hash browns and French fries. The food was excellent and all of them were a huge success.

One morning I found a voice mail message from Clicker asking me to stop by a warehouse he owned over on the Evil Side. An explanation *about the Evil Side. There’s a large lake east of Seattle dividing a large portion of Western Washinton into two halves and on the east side of the lake is a wealthy town called Bellevue. Going over to Bellevue is called driving over to the evil side. After I got Clicker’s message I tried to call and let him know I was coming but his phone kept going to voice mail. My day was free, and I was curious what he could possibly want with me.

I found the warehouse and parked on the side. Walking through the front door of the warehouse I was greeted with total pandemonium. In front of me was a machine full of hot oil about 60 feet long and literally falling out of one end of the cooker were doughnuts. And when I say falling, I’m not exaggerating. Doughnuts were constantly pouring out of the end of the cooker without any belt to take them away. Clicker ran past me screaming, “Don’t just stand there. Go find some pencils and when the doughnuts come off the machine, stack them over the pencils to keep them from falling over.” And off he ran frantically searching for more pencils.

I remembered there was a small grocery store next door, and I went over and asked the owner if he would sell me some of the plastic bags he had which were used for purchasing vegetables. He told me to take what I needed, and I pulled off several dozen bags. I ran back to the machine and opened a bag. Each bag held ten to twelve doughnuts and as soon as I had a bunch of filled bags, I told one of the kids working on the line to take some of the filled bags to the store next door and then come right back. When the kid returned, I had more of the bags filled and I told him to go out, walk around the complex handing the bags of doughnuts to whomever would take a bag, or two. The kid looked at me and asked, “You mean like for free?”

“Yes, damn it, now go and hurry back because we’ll have more.” It was a guess on my part, but the supply of doughnuts coming out of the fryer didn’t seem to be slowing down. The kid returned shortly with another kid in tow, and I gave both of them some filled bags.

Clicker was running past and I hollered at him to stop. He looked at me with bug eyes filled with terror. “Shut the damn thing off,” I told him.

“I can’t. There are paddles under the oil which move the doughnuts along. Halfway through there is another paddle that turns the doughnut over. Each doughnut pushes the doughnut in front of it and that pushes the whole thing through the fryer. You have to let it run until the batter runs out.”