This post has been inspired by a gathering of drivers for Enterprise Rent-A-Car.
I have been driving for them for four of five years now, along with a bunch of other old guys who are happy to have a part time job to supplement our retirement incomes. There are mornings when, as I look around at a group of us gathered at the Hanwell Branch ready to start our day, I think the place looks like the common room in a nursing home.
Some of us call ourselves 'Vehicle Relocation Specialists' which is just a little sillier than designating us as part of the ‘Fleet Logistics’ team.
We have those words, Fleet Logistics, stitched on the jackets and hats we have been given which implies, for the people who see us when we stop for coffee at Tim's or under the Golden Arches, that we are good at figuring stuff out for Enterprise - whose corporate logo is also stitched on our jackets so that our simple presence constitutes advertisements for our employer. But, the truth is, we don’t have to plan for or think about anything.
It is our boss, the ‘Fleet Logistics Co-ordinator’, who does have to figure stuff out. She does all the planning and figures out how to get the vehicles from one place to another as needed. It can be a headache for her but it is zero stress and zero planning for us. We just do what we are told to do.
For the purpose of encouraging us to do as we are told cheerfully, our boss and some of those in higher echelons of the Enterprise staff, provide an evening out for us from time to time, the most recent being a meal at a Fredericton Pub before Christmas.
The project shown here began with my astonishment upon seeing Kenny without a hat on!
I thought Kenny had lots of hair because, so long as he wore a hat, it seemed he did. But, as I arrived at our Christmas gathering at the Snooty Fox and saw him for the first time with his shiny bald pate fully exposed, it immediately struck me that he appeared to be a Friar! More specifically, because of the atmosphere of general merriment, it seemed he was the very reincarnation of Friar Tuck of English folklore fame!
I immediately expressed my surprise and as I took my place at our table, I told the one about the cannibals who had terrible indigestion because they had boiled and eaten the last missionary they had captured before realizing that he was a fryer. That set him off and his laughter is contagious.
Having recently reacquainted myself with some of the writing of Charles Dickens, and having enjoyed his lengthy sentences with the leisurely turn of phrase and elaborate descriptions so characteristic of that much-loved icon of English literature and which make one all the more appreciative of mastery of the mother tongue in this world of waning literacy, I decided to attempt to emulate Dickensonian prose in using the legend of Robin Hood as a lens of sorts through which to look upon my Enterprise colleagues with new eyes and to frame a back story to inform my artistic representation of that celebrative gathering, to wit:
In the short grey days of the approaching winter solstice, when summer warmth is a distant memory and spring greening is so far away that it is barely imaginable and people long for respite from the early darkness at days end, nothing is more welcome than a cheerful assembly of friends in a warm and cozy and room. At just such a time, the lovely and generous Maid Marion – aka Jess MacIntosh, our boss -
- extended an invitation to Robin Hood and his merry men to join her for just such an assembly in a well-known and pleasant Public House where the ale and victuals would be her treat as we approached the annual feast of the nativity of our Lord. We all arrived in good humor, especially the voluble Friar Tuck, (aka Kenny Creighton) whom, it seemed, had been testing the most recent batch of his famous Mead and, finding it extraordinarily agreeable, was quite unable to contain his outbursts of mirth. Robin, (aka Brian Taylor) who is generally more restrained, appeared also to be under the influence of the Friar’s mead and was uncharacteristically, and quite simply, just cracking up. Indeed, we were all in a celebratory mood because of the pleasures our enterprises on the King’s Highways have afforded us and Tuck’s good humor was so infectious that we were all soon overcome by spasms of hilarity, induced more by the good Friar’s laughter than by our consumption of ale.
All of us, that is, save two who shared our table and whose sober countenances betrayed their disapprobation as they cast sideways glances at the inebriate celebrants whose jocularity appeared to them to be unseemly. These two I have presented here as the treacherous Sherriff of Nottingham (aka Joe Wood ) and the villainous Prince John - (aka Alan Hatfield) - while , at the same time, begging their forgiveness for casting them in these unappealing roles – and praying that they do not take offense.
Since these were done for my amusement and not as commissions, I have offered them for sale with the assurance that all proceeds shall go to the support of a poor man such as one who would have, in days of yore, found the sympathetic support of Robin Hood and his merry men, whose chief enterprise was to rob from the rich and give to the poor so that, in some small way, the economic injustices of the time could be addressed and protested.
Sadly, such enterprise needs to be encouraged all the more in our time since gross inequality is greater than ever as the rich continue to find ways to rob from the poor, remaining free under the cover of doing so lawfully while the simple poor are under as much threat as ever they were in Robin Hoods time, leaving, for example, the above-mentioned poor man, a retired minister (namely me!) with no option but to continue to work far into his dotage to supplement his modest income and meager pension with the sale of drawings such as these.
