by N. Marc Mullin
Jimmy Spins couldn’t spin a bowling ball to save his life and had nothing to do with the spinning of yarns or any such thing. Jimmy Pots had no potbelly, didn’t pot plants, and never smoked a joint as far as I knew. But I, Mighty Dog, once had curls like the poodle on a can of pet food by that name. So Jimmy Spins, our namer of names, got one right.
Spins nicknamed himself and Pots when we were little, and the titles stuck, never sounding as dopey as they seem now. We grew up spending summers at our fathers’ fishing shacks on Pig Bog, off the causeway to Lenape Island, New Jersey. Like our dads and uncles, we became tin knockers, sheet metal workers, monkeying on scaffolds and A-ladders, stringing ductwork through the towers of Manhattan. Spins named me while we worked the World Trade Center. I can still see him writing it in red marker on my hard hat. Continue reading
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