Let me start this by saying I wasn't always a professional designer.  Sometimes I would take a job at a local tire shop just for a break.  Changing tires for me was an easy, repeatable, non-thinking task (like effective branding and marketing should be).  It's during one of the longer and more enjoyable stints at a place called 'On the Rim Again' that I met Old Joe.

In addition to tire changes during the day, I had been tasked with picking up and delivering guard dogs with Old Joe; something he'd already been doing it for a number of years.  I was just the new driver.  We delivered dogs to various locations across the city first thing in the morning and last thing at night for on-site K9 security. The vehicle? A custom built pickup truck with a number of enclosed kennels on the back of it.

Old Joe walked slowly and had a bit of a limp.  One of his hands shook from an injury sustained in something like 1953 when an officer slammed his hand in the door of his car during an altercation with them.  His hair was disheveled and matted, his skin total tough leather with various residues  and motor oils possibly dating back a number of years from his unwashed state.  Behind his eyes though was a devious, crafty, playful kid-like un-dulled intelligence that went way beyond the impressions he physically manifested on people.

Old Joe drank.  He drank a lot.  24 bottles of beer a day.  48 on weekends plus a bottle of scotch.  He called them coolie-pops because someone had told him not to tell people he was .  Monday mornings always started with me banging on his door for what seemed to be an eternity followed by "For F*s sake, alright I'm coming.  Ok.. OK!! hold your horses." ... Although you knew he had already been up and that he was faking it.  You could hear the eagerness in his voice.  I never did know though if his smile upon opening the door was for me, the tasks ahead, or for the morning beer the boss told me to give him to get started.

Old Joe stank.  I mean garbage-left-in-the-sun-for-a-week stank.  His clothes were the same, day in and day out.  Although I never witnessed it, the boss said they stripped him down and hosed him off every few months.  I probably would have too.  We used to joke that if the world came to an end, the only living creatures on the planet would be cockroaches... and Old Joe.

Old Joe wasn't allowed on our trips to drink; whether we were on the road or at the places we stopped.  The boss knew he would sneak them, so I was instructed to search the truck after Joe loaded the dogs and before we set out.  I'll tell you, that Joe was tricky as hell. When I found his stashes I would have to confiscate them.  I always missed a couple on purpose, but only on the days he wasn't a complete arse.. Just to say 'thank you for not being an arse'.

He He was one of those people who either liked you or didn't.  He was grumpy.  Worn-out-and-didn't-care type grumpy.  He carried a grudge as far as he could, but if you made him laugh, all was forgiven. I would like to think that he ended up liking me.  I got to make him laugh a number of times and I tried to listen to his uncanny wisdom through his stories.  Some of them were fantastic, others sad, but through it all, I was just mesmerized by his incredible sounding life.

After the lengthy morning and evening "I'm too tired still" silences in the truck, Joe liked to relate tidbits of his life between the tirades about how the boss took his coolie-pops away and treated him badly .   Whenever he was mad and I would ask him something he knew about the boss, his response was always "I don't know nuthin!" which I still use to this day.  He rarely talked about being estranged from his daughter and having never laid eyes on his grandchild.  I think the stubbornness prevented him from reaching out.  That conversation drove home the importance of me forgiving family sooner rather than later. In true MacGuyver fashion, he was also able to keep the truck running.  On the day that the clutch cable broke and I couldn't get it out of 2nd gear, we pulled off the road and Joe hopped out with his normal "Ouuuhhh" noise.  Off he went, rooting around in the one container used for supplies at the back of the vehicle.  Watching in the mirror as he took a swig from one of his 'stashes' that I had ignored, he grabbed a chain dog collar and headed to the front.  With the hood open, he disappeared for a few minutes..  The hood slammed, dog collar gone, and he stood up as straight as he could.  "Try it now.".. Wow.  A chain dog collar installed as a clutch cable.  It worked and got us home.  I'll never be scared to look for alternative solutions of any sort with whatever is available to me.

I don't know if Old Joe is still alive or whether he ever saw his daughter again, those days are long past for me.  What will be timeless though are the gifts of wisdom he left me with.