When I left my first job as a dishwasher, I applied for jobs elsewhere in my small hometown, for about two weeks. Then I moved in with my sister and her husband four hours away, and lived in her enclosed front porch. She had four children, the oldest 10 and the youngest in preschool at this point. I had spent a previous summer babysitting them, so I knew them pretty well. But this time I applied for jobs outside her home, and brought my bike to get to and from work.

A newly opened barbecue restaurant hired me. They served meals in a cafeteria line. The smoked meat was delicious. The owner had found a recipe for barbecue sauce by watching a wonderful chef make sauce, while he measured the amounts the chef put in. The chef’s “pinch” of seasonings measured a tablespoon, he said, because he seized so much between his large thumb and finger.

The back of the restaurant contained an enormous smoker, full of slowly turning racks of meat. There was a faucet near the bottom where a thick black liquid could be drained out. The owner said it was like liquid gold: smoke flavoring, valuable to sell on its own, a byproduct of smoking. I’d never heard of it, and indeed, never used any until many years later, when it became available in small bottles at the scratch-n-dent food store.

There was a pile of hickory wood by the back door. It was there I learned to identify earwigs, small bugs with pincers on their back ends.

I served on the line, I washed dishes, I wiped tables, and I restocked the warmer that held hot towels damp with lemon water, for cleaning hands. The food was good; I loved it. The bosses were clearer in their expectations. After the second time I protested that wasn’t how it was done at my previous job, the owner’s wife who was training me, flatly told me that didn’t matter. This is how we do it now. I was willing to learn but inexperienced and a bit dense in picking up what’s not explicitly said.

The manager under the owner was a very large man with authority and kindness; I liked him. I remember an Asian woman worked next to me; she worked very hard and very fast and didn’t talk much.

There was one young woman about my age. She and I became friends, sort of. I had never lived away from home except for a year in the dorm at a religious college, and was not adventurous. This young woman persuaded me to ride my bike downtown with her after work, around 11 p.m., to meet up with her friends. I was willing to try it. Her friends were cheerful enough, but didn’t know me and I didn’t know them. After a half hour of just hanging out, I decided I wanted to go home. She was concerned and offered to go with me, but I said I could make it.

I rode and rode and found myself in downtown Casper, Wyoming, in the financial center where the banks and taller buildings sprouted out of the sidewalks, in the middle of the night. There were no people anywhere. The stoplights turned red and green and the walk signals went, but nobody was there to ask for directions. Finally I got to a street number that felt familiar; I followed it into the residential areas and got back home.

The next shift the young woman was worried about me; I told her I got lost but I made it back home. She apologized and felt awful; I forgave her. I had been worried a bit but not really scared, just puzzled on how to get home. I think I was protected from fear.