4 cooks in the 90s.

4 cooks in the 90s. Working a restaurant in a smallish town. The leader Red was an expert cook but also an expert at fixing things. Us others were into being chefs and drunks. We were all a couple years younger than Red. He was always amazed we got lots of romance. He loved hearing stories of our "Night befores" We tried to help him. The other two chefs were "clothes guys" they offered to teach him to dress and dance. I offered to teach him how to ask women out. He loved hearing us talk about our dates but said he was waiting for his "camping girlfriend" to come into his life. Red moved to the early morning shift. I only saw him on the time sheets for a while. One day I got scheduled to work a shift with him. I was shocked that he was listening to Rush Limbaugh. I listened for an hour and said "Hey, this guy is a right prick, someone should push him off a ledge. His words were creating victims out of people who weren't victims. He was all about punching down, denying science and pushing a corporate dominance worldview." Red said "I know, I'm just listening to make fun of this idiot" I went back to my shift. After a while we could tell Red resented us. When we worked together he no longer wanted to hear anything about the ladies. I again had to work some mornings a few weeks later. Rush was still on but now Red was all in. He started using words like "Illegals" and "Welfare", he felt his taxes were being used on "Welfare pimps" I asked if he had any luck finding a camping girlfriend but his desires had changed. Now he was saving up for an Asian Mail order wife. "They are so subservient" That made me sick. We missed the old Red so much. Old Red could work with people who spoke Spanish as a first language. That radio voice and his self imposed social isolation created a monster nobody wanted to work with. I saw that play out in others many times but never had a front row seat like with Red. He was a perfect, miserable reflection of manipulative right wing propaganda. It was singing a song he could dance to but it led him down into darkness. Finding out Rush has passed today made me think of Red and his other victims. He created a lot of Aholes that created a lot of misery in families across the nation. I'm glad he is over. Red was laughing the last time I saw him. In an unrelated incident some of us decided it would be funny to put eggs into the mounted moose head. Due to a mishap of miscreant cook communication instead of one of us hiding an egg all of us at different points threw in eggs, ham and everything else we had handy. Soon as the smell started happening the owners had Red pull it down. I was walking out as he was on the bench laughing his head off that so much food was in the moose head. I like to think maybe a camping girlfriend found him and turned him around.