No one can say the man wasn’t smart, said Regis.
Him? He always wore dirty clothes, snarled Claude.
The men were silent.
You know, I always believed he knew when he looked at it, said Jean.
What do you mean? Oh, the trestle you’re talking about?
He knew he could do it.
What was it he told the papers? I had to bend up one wingtip and cut five feet off the other.
He loved to exaggerate for the papers, said Jean.
A tall man spoke,
My son was working in a up-scale camera store on the east side of Manhattan, I mean Jackie Kennedy shopped there – that kind of place. Bronson came in and took apart a Polaroid Land Camera right on the counter. He exclaimed Ah, Ha! when he discovered they’d stolen his patent.
Ah, Ha! is right. He won a settlement from Polaroid and they had to pay him six cents for every camera they sold after that, said Regis.
They stole the beeping device from him, said Jean, they used it to signal when the pictures were developed in the Land camera.
He worked for Polaroid before he came to Greenville, said Regis, so he knew how they operated.
You mean their arrogance? said Jean.
Sure. Bronson called himself the first hippy to graduate from Harvard, told Regis, and he had a shrewd distrust of corporations that made him a lot of money. He sued GM for using his Sonalert in their vehicles without paying him for it. GM used it to warn occupants that their seat belts weren’t fastened.
The guy looked like a hobo, grumbled Claude.
He was a hippy, teased Jean.
Hippy, my ass, dismissively muttered Claude waving his cigarette hand for emphasis.
He was opposed to any repressive hierarchical power structure, explained Jean.
Bullshit snapped Claude.
Jean laughingly shrugged his shoulders. Regis said,
He invented an electric blanket that would turn on or off by body heat. When the occupant got under the blanket, it would turn on, and when he got out, it would turn off.
Jean teased,
You’re what the hippies would call uptight, Claude.
Bullshit, grunted Claude.
Speaking of shit, said Regis, the government paid him money for an invention that eliminated human waste.
What? What was that you said? asked the tall man.