It was more than 40 years ago, but I still remember sitting on a milk crate in the "circle of bodymen" during the morning coffee break. It was dead winter in New York. All around me, the cars that were brought in that morning were still de-icing, dripping water and slush onto the floor.
This was my dad's store - and a tighter Scotsman you'd never meet - so the heat was set on 55.
"You're cold? Well, move faster!" still rings in my ears (and sometimes it comes out of my mouth when somebody complains about our heat, which is set on 65 degrees).
"What a dark, dirty, miserable business this is!" I thought that day. "I don't want to be one of these old, dirty, meat-hooks-for-hands bodymen when I grow up."
