Time spent at Shady's Chicken Shack brings enlightenment

by Paul Flemming

It's resolution time. As the calendar turns to a new year, many of us feel compelled to make solemn promises about our lives for the next 12 months. These resolutions are informed by the previous 12 months, our failings and triumphs in the year just past and all the years before it.

Always one to lean upstream, I'm not much for Jan. 1 resolutions. Instead, I take my stock in the fall.

Every autumn, for more than a decade now, I have forced myself to write down a list of aphorisms, guiding principles for the 12 months ahead. Not satisfied to merely bore myself with these annual inanities, I have decided to compile the best of them from throughout the past and offer them as a collection of sage advisements.

The idea for this anthology came to me one day in the supermarket. At an aisle's end was a shopping cart containing the detritus of the grocery business dented canned goods, leaking bottles of outdated corn syrup, one lone battery without packaging and several bags of baked goods in various stages of decay. A sign attached proclaimed the items therein "Still Good! Our Loss Is Your Gain! Marked Down To Move!"

Thus it came to me to peddle my own junk. Not the material kind, but rather the useless faux pearls of wisdom collected over the years in the eccentric annual practice I previously described.

Furthermore, adhering to one of my dictums from 1987 (Namely, "Do as little work as possible"), I am merely offering the insights of one year.

Why muddle through all those lists

to come up with a "Best Of" when

this sort of drivel is largely interchangeable?

This particular list was written in 1979. I had just flunked out of college, the rent was due and I'd taken employment at a local fast-food emporium.

At that time of my life I was confused and adrift in a seemingly uncaring world. But employment enlightened

me and I soon discovered All I Really Need to Know About Life I could learn at Shady's Chicken Shack.

These are the things I learned:

?Out of sight, out of the health inspector's mind.

?You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, but if you really want to pull 'em in, try poultry viscera.

?Watched cauldrons of gelatinous oil never boil.

?A penny saved is a substantial portion of your paycheck.

?You can't believe everything you see on television, but the stuff on "60 Minutes" about fecal soup is absolutely true.

?Never let the customers see in the kitchen.

?If you have an I.Q. above the freezing point, you are management material.

?Be nice to your coworkers, some of them are carrying weapons.

?Take a cigarette break every afternoon.

?Always ask, "Would you like some chitterlings with that?"

?Show responsibility; someday they may let you run the cash register.

?Cops eat for free.

?Be aware of wonder. At one time the chicken in your hand was a living, breathing being in no way resembling the dissected pieces comprising the

No. 3 PikNik Pak.

?When you go out into the world at quitting time, watch out for muggers, carry mace and don't forget to get a 12 of Shiner beer on your way home.

?And then remember the sign posted by management in big block letters: All Employees Must Wash Hands After Using Toilet.

It's all pretty much covered there. The health code and the American Dream and the failings of human relations. Botulism and arteriosclerosis and the ostensible bribery of law enforcement officers.

Think of how the world would improve if we all had a smoke around three o'clock and everyone wanted chitterlings with that.

But the most important lesson of all is to retain a sense of wonder.

A week into my tenure I began to wonder about my aptly named employer, Shady.

It turned out he was running numbers out of his office in back, and a little more wonder revealed this enterprise was merely an adjunct to a very profitable drug distributorship.

I turned Shady over to the Feds

and was placed in a witness-protec-

tion program, under the auspices of which I've lived quite comfortably

ever since.

This experience led to the next year's list, a single admonition:

Screw or be screwed.

May your business prosper, your life be filled with joy, your advertising budget be large and your news tips be plentiful in 1998.

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