The Fly, by JF

We were meeting in the new “Board Room.”   It was outfitted in grand style, to suit the grand folks that were meeting there.  A very large round table was in the center of the room.  It is the largest round table you will ever see, maybe 12 feet in diameter.  Our former main office had to be torn down because of a paper mill expansion in the mid 1980s. The meeting was with the construction and engineering “Firm” that we had hired to build the new paper machine.  This meeting was to talk about the relatively small amount of expansion in the Kraft pulp mill and other lesser items.  There were plenty of suits and yellow legal pads in evidence.  I was there because some testing labs were to be combined in a passage way on the second floor over the road between an existing machine and the new machine.  As an aside, when winter came, there had been no insulation in the floor of the lab and the temperature on the floor hovered around 40 degrees F.  This caused much unrest.

The Firm had their chief Kraft mill guy giving the presentation, with plenty of backup.  This person was really a good engineer and was well respected at our plant.  He was in his late 40’s, I’d guess.  He always wore a black suit and a 60’s era narrow black tie…the same one every time he came.  I loved those ties and I admired the way he gave slide show presentations.  He would say, “”This is slide one” and after a short pause with no other explanation, he would say, “This is slide two” etc.  The whole show didn’t take long that way, what a relief.  After the presentation, we broke for lunch.

When the meeting began again, a fly had entered the room.  This was not easy as there were at least three doors to conquer.  He was a normal southern black fly that we have all encountered at picnics, barbeques, homes etc.  We know of his nimbleness and ability to escape death or even to be touched.  His relative, the northern black fly, as in Maine , has the ability to stab you with his stinger which usually brings about his death because of his lack of nimbleness.  This fly flitted about the board room, as flies do, and was shooed off by the back of many hands (note how we shoo flies).  We all know where flies land and what he steps in and want none of it. 

Eventually the fly landed in front of one of our engineers…Tom.  He is a southern boy and had encountered flies all of his life.  Carefully Tom’s hand formed the  thumping position as the fly wandered around the yellow pad.  I watched entranced.  Soon the spring was sprung… and the fly disappeared; you know how flies can disappear in your house.  Was it a hit or a miss?  For a few seconds neither Tom nor I knew about the drama taking place; we were the only ones aware.  Finally across the large 12-foot table, a Firm’s young engineer looked down and then straight up!  What had killed a fly in the air?  There he lay, apparently dead, on his yellow pad.  The Firm’s engineer pulled the yellow pad, ever so slowly, off the table while watching to see if any one was watching.  The poor dead fly was deposited on the carpet like a sailor buried at sea.

It was very, very hard to keep from laughing out loud in an otherwise somber meeting.

This was one of my more memorable meetings.  Tom and I still laugh about it every time we see each other.  

By JF