Memorial Day and I am working the 3-11 shift at my regular job. I brought in some grilled hot dogs to lessen the pain of working on the holiday. We had to work in one of the ejector pits today. And I must say that getting into a tank of shit and piss with cock roaches all around is a humbling experience. Most of the sewage from the buildings goes out by gravity above the first floor. But in the basements the sewage from the commodes is gathered in a couple of big tanks and it has to be pumped up to the main sewage lines and out of the basements. Today we found one of the float balls in the tank broke off the rod that controls the pump that moves the shit up and out of the tank. So I put my rubber gloves on and I fished the broken float ball out of the shit .Then we unhooked the rod. There are two pumps and two floats per tank, so that you have a back up. The reason that I am mentioning all this is because I don’t think that you can write about food without talking about shit. And when you work in shit you know you earned your money on that day. So being the working class heroes that a lot of people think that they are, I thought I might get some glory too by reveling in the fact that I can get into shit. I can work in it but I don’t have to like it. And it reminds me that even when you go to the best restaurant in town and spend a fortune for that meal, it all ends up in a shit tank somewhere and it provides people like me with jobs. Another crazy thing happened on this Memorial Day. While I was working on a float of a different kind – one for an air-conditioning pump, my partner called me on the walkie talkie and told me to meet him in the plaza at the fountain pool. When I got there, to my surprise a squirrel had died standing up under water and had attracted a small crowd. It looked like it was still alive. While Jim, my partner, went to get a long pole with a net on it I struck up a conversation with some people in the crowd. I had one girl convinced that the squirrel was just holding his breath under the water. It dawned on me that I had never seen a squirrel in water of any kind and it looked kind of strange. I did see a squirrel drink out of a bird bath on one or two occasions. Everybody was trying to figure out what had happened. One guy thought he fell out of a tree. Another theory was he fell into the fountain while he was getting a drink. It was funny to me the way people were so interested in this animal tragedy. People were looking for some kind of connection with other people and this small tragedy gave it to them. Hell it gave it to me! What is lacking in the world of T.V. and cars that keeps us most of the time from connecting in any meaningful way. Then Jim showed up with the skimming net. He scooped out the little animal into a cardboard box and we gave him a proper burial in a dumpster. But not before I asked nobody in particular in the crowd if anybody had ever eating squirrel stew.