I was a homeless drunk in Denver, but I still worked. Temp agencies mostly. If a customer needed a guy the next day, I was the one they asked for again.
One week they sent me to this small manufacturing shop on the edge of Commerce City. Place was clean as a whistle—floors shining, everything in its place. They put me on a CNC lathe that was already programmed. My whole job was to load the part, push the buttons, and not screw it up.
After two days, the boss calls me into his office.
‘You’re a good worker,’ he says. ‘How much you want an hour?’
I tell him, ‘Don’t pay me by the hour. Pay me piecework. Twenty‑five cents a part.’
He thinks for a second and says, ‘Okay.’
So I’m thinking: maybe this is a turn. Next morning, I ride my bicycle all the way out there. I walk in and his face has changed. He tells me he can’t hire me after all—the temp agency contract, doesn’t want to get in trouble.
Instead, he presses a folded bill into my hand. Later I look—hundred bucks.
So now I’m riding back, sun on my face, a hundred dollars in my pocket, feeling like the universe finally tossed me a bone. And that’s when I hit a grass burr.
I was so far out in Commerce City it took me two hours to walk that bike home. Next day, that hundred went to new tires.
Well… most of it.
The rest was well spent on a 40‑ounce and a half pint of whiskey.
That was my life back then: fix the bike, feed the ghost, and keep pedaling.”
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