Working with Mennonites (among others) in the mid-80s

 At Winnipeg's Astral Photo, right behind Eaton's (called, quite naturally, The Eaton Place Mall) it was not uncommon for me to work alongside or even beneath Paraguayan Mennonites. I lost the attitude pretty quickly. 

My original manager was moving ahead to manage the city's first Toys 'R' Us store. She was going to be replaced by a beautiful Paraguayan Mennonite who had quite the reputation for being a taskmaster. I confessed these fears to my current manager. "Oh, she'll love you," I was told, but I wasn't so sure. 

My new manager was indeed attractive, but she was also entirely taken, and good luck getting past that guy. No, there was nothing for it but to roll up my polyester sleeves and get to work. Besides drowning a Pentax PC35AF-M in the Assiniboine River (another story) I got along with her. 

I caught Montezuma's Revenge from the Shoal Lake water one weekend. "Nah yo," said my new manager, "did you scheeß dir dann Kopf aus, or can you still work for me?"

Like any manager she hired what she knew, and she knew Paraguayan Mennonites. My coworker was a Mennonite from Paraguay, a young mother. "My son is just about your age — he really likes Honeymoon Suite. Such a sick name for a band!" And Canadian! 

I also worked with a couple of sisters whose father was a Cardiologist who smoked like a chimney. One of these young women would time her break to the second. She went to the Italian cafe in the basement, where she ordered and sipped on a capuccino while smoking a cigarette and sitting at their patio table in the hallway by their arched windowway. 

We had a customer who would photograph her and members of Cheap Trick and other rock groups getting stoned. She invited a taller guy I worked with to a wedding. He asked if I wasn't coming along, but I had to work. "You're lucky," he said later. "You've at least got that excuse." I asked if he was going. "Are you kidding? Haven't you seen her?"

Actually, she looked like a lot of fun, which these rockers could smell a mile away. That, and the really good weed.  

For my former coworker, a Mennonite from Paraguay, this is the official video of "New Girl Now" by Honeymoon Suite: 

And because I live in Hamilton these days this is Teenage Head: 

In Hamilton there is a statue of Frankie Venom. I gather there was a kerfuffle about this because apparently Frankie was not a nice guy. Yeah, but he was a rock star in the early '80s(!) in Hamilton, Ontario who answered to (when he could be bothered) "Frankie Venom"(!!) for a band that called itself "Teenage Head."(!!!) He was also a raging alcoholic. Those looking for a paragon of virtue did better to look elsewhere. The statue went up. 

The Dirty Nil is also from "The Hammer":