unfair part 1

It wasn’t the lute player, the mead wenches or the juggling of the court jester that first caught Larry Murphy’s attention. Nor was it the fact that the Knights had taken a break from their jousting to join in the singing. It was, in fact, the astonishing number of candles on his birthday cake. He knew how many there were, well above forty. But it looked like so much more and the fact that they weren’t grocery store candles but rather thick, Elizabethan tapers made his cake look all the more enflamed.

Larry’s wife Bonnie and their daughter Carla smiled and sang as they carried the cake toward him. Larry looked at the two loves of his life certain that at any moment their hair would connect with one of the many, many tapers and this celebration would turn tragic.

Happy Birthday to you.
Happy Birthday to you.
Happy Birthday… Dear Larry…
Happy Birthday to you.

Larry leaned forward and blew. Not even a third of the candles went out but despite that, the assembled cast and crew members of the San Bernardino Renaissance Pleasure Faire went wild with applause. Larry was, after all, the king and this was the tenth year of his rule.

Every spring since 1978 Larry worked at the SBRPF or Ren-Fair for short. The first year he worked there he was sixteen and needed a job, any job, to save up for a car. The Ren-Fair ran every weekend for six weeks and was in his mind the perfect way to make some quick cash. He had no particular interest in the Renaissance or Elizabethan culture in general but the first day he stepped through the gates of the county fair grounds and left behind the twentieth century, he knew he had found his home. In the fifteenth century he wasn’t the awkward and perpetually acne ridden teen who ranked low on the social order of Herbert Hoover High, here he was an adult. In the fifteenth century a sixteen year old would be married, have children and property. Since the average life span in the fifteenth century was thirty five, Larry was delighted to find himself suddenly middle aged. In true Elizabethan fashion, or perhaps due to the easy-breezy fashion of adult supervision in the seventies, Larry was put in charge of a Steak on a Stake franchise and he hit the ground running.

"Steak on a Stake my Lords and Ladies. With marinades from the Orient," he would shout to the "serfs" as they wandered from one amusement to another. Marinades from the Orient turned out to be Kikoman soy sauce and a bunch of sesame oil but no matter – he made it  sound good. Larry wasn’t like the other employees of Steak on a Stake, he took it seriously. Where as Thomas and Petra were busy getting stoned behind the port-o-potties (disguised as miniature Tudor huts) Larry made a show of each sale and raked in the tips.
"The finest of meats for my lady. Ye shan’t be finding a more enticing selection in all the kingdom." 

Two weeks into the job he knew he would work here for the rest of his life, and so far, that dream had come true.