Hamish is currently reading a book on Italian history; one of the tidbits he’s come across were that oftentimes, the pharmacist, embalmer-undertaker, and pastry cook were the same job (apothecary). You know, because of the chemical equipment and oven.
A little while later, he was mentioning a documentary that CBC had done on three people whose jobs involved causing pain. They were a dentist, a dominatrix, and a moyl. So of course I piped up, “What if those three were one job??!”
So - what three professions would it be very strange to have be one job?
There’s a song by Michael Longcor which he swears is based on a sign he used to see in Indiana: “Bob’s Dog Obedience School and Taxidermy Shop.” In an introduction to the song he says he never had the nerve to actually check the place out; the song contains the line “If Fido doesn’t learn we’ll stuff him for free.”
An old friend once claimed that he knew a sadist who worked as a hospital radiology tech. Supposedly, this guy liked to look people in the eye as he positioned them on the table. I doubt the story myself, but I’m almost tempted to let my next broken bone heal by itself.
My wife and I have talked about buying an old frontier jail and converting it into a wedding facility. If we do, we will offer a shotgun service.
This reminds me… I once saw a tow truck that said, “Ray’s Towing and Plumbing”. It had what might have been a small septic tank on the back, just in front of the towing crane.
“In 1378 the Florentine painters were officially included in the same guild as the doctors and apothecaries, and in Bologna the Arte degli Speziali (guild of specialists) also included distillers, wax-makers and sellers of aquavitae, liquorice, honey and dried fruit, comfits, paints, rat-poison, and church wafers!”
(Iris Origo, The Merchant of Prato, p. 377n)
This follows immediately after a description of a medieval Italian recipe involving roasting a peacock, putting its skin and feathers back on afterward, skewering its head so it stays up and looks alive, and putting a cotton ball soaked with aqua vitae in its mouth and lighting it so the peacock appears to breathe fire. Definitely the highlight of any social calendar!
