(Click picture to enlarge.)
Here, Jones relates the current state of affairs at Cardinal. Although he seems to address the missive to me ("Cap'n Tom") I expect it was a newsletter sent to several expatriates. (In my case, although I had quit full-time employment at Cardinal, I still came in when there was money for the occasional free-lance gig.)
Like several of us, Jones had an unhealthy attachment to the place. And some of us, perhaps influenced by the company's misfortunes, or Jones' virtual homelessness, or maybe the financial malaise of the country at large, became obsessed with the notion of "hard times". It showed up in the group writing efforts posted to the walls of an abandoned upstairs office. Wm P penned one installment in which he (or somebody) tries to get warm by wrapping up in tar paper. And he has somebody (maybe Jay C, JC?) saying, "I'm cold buddy".
In a hard times experiment, I once drank beer with Jones in a public park, being covertly gawked at by upstanding citizens. Jones seemed pleased and proud.
(Note the official, legal sounding language that Jones uses. He was actually a law school graduate and might have even passed his bar exam before becoming a salesman in a camera store.)
It could have been Jay, or possibly Chuck Lemerise who was cold (Chuckie often called us 'buddy' when not calling us smart ass MF" but I think Jay would call us 'buddy' too). I cant recall. I recall there was some scene several of us were writing episodes about, taking place in a train's boxcar. You probably started it. You, or whoever wrote one episode that I recall, had me drinking from a bottle of 'tawny port.'
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