When I graduated from college, I had my teaching certificate, a major in English and a minor in drama. I went into teaching English. I also got heavily involved in the theater, which I still am to this day.

I taught for a couple of years in CT.Then I moved to Maine where I continued teaching and where I bought a farm, and became a homesteader. I raised about 80% of my own food, including vegetables, grains, fruits, goat milk, pork, chicken, rabbit and beef. I ground my own grain for bread. I cut down, cut up and burned about twelve cords of wood every year for heat and cooking, (I had a Home Comfort wood cookstove in the kitchen of the farmhouse.) After a number of years of doing that, I got tired. So I quit teaching, moved back to CT and went into the family business.

My grandfather started the business back in 1943, making bungee cords for landing gear on small airplanes. Today, the place is run by my uncle, myself and my two younger brothers. We design and make precision molded rubber products for a number of industrial fields, with a decided emphasis on the aerospace and orthopedic implant industries, on a world-wide basis.

Our main product line is something called hard masking. When, for example, a customer has a piece of metal that he or she needs to coat with, say, enamel, but only parts of the metal need to be coated while the rest must remain enamel-free, that customer calls on us.

We then create a custom-made “mask” of rubber that fits over the parts of the metal that need to be protected, thus insuring that those areas do not get coated.

Over the years, we have developed many different rubber formulas for different applications. We have rubber compounds of all different hardnesses that will hold up to gasoline, sandblasting, or heat in excess of 700 degrees Fahrenheit.

When I came into the business with my love of words and my theatrical background, I was a perfect fit in the sales/marketing department. I spend most of my time talking to existing customers and searching the internet for new customers.

I love what I do. I love words, I love performing, and I love talking to people.

Okay, enough background. Here’s the story:

Yesterday, I got a phone call from a woman, Darlene, in Ohio whose company I had contacted a few weeks earlier, thinking that her company was a good candidate to become a customer. (Darlene’s company applies enamel coating to metal pieces.)

When she spoke to me on the phone, she was pleasant but very professional. She told me that she had trailer hitches for which she wanted us to create masking. (She faxed me a blueprint of the metal part.) She went on to say that these metals have two hitching balls on them that must be masked when the metal bar to which the balls are attached is being coated with enamel.

As I was looking at the print while speaking to her, she reiterated the instructions more succinctly, saying, “In other words, Jim, the two balls must be protected in a rubber sack of some kind, but the big shaft must be exposed.”

Trying to sound as professional as I could, I asked her if she would mind repeating that last sentence.

She thought about it for a moment. Then, I swear I could hear her blushing over the phone as she very coolly replied, “No.”

Then we both burst out laughing.

I love my job.