The Crime and Death Scene Cleaning Business

Posted by Jeff Lipshaw

Every honest occupation is an honorable one, but you kind of wonder how people happen to get into some.  I wonder about it when I see a commercial for the Orkin man.  Do people grow up thinking about getting into that line of business?  When we lived in Ann Arbor, we had an exterminator by the name of Mr. Roache, who had taken over the business from his father, and that all seemed pretty fated to me.  (If you live in the area, by the way, he was first-rate, and I want the federal government to know this plug is entirely gratuitous on my part – Mr. Roache fully earned the praise by the way he handled both the carpenter bees in the eaves, and the yellow jackets in the porch steps back in 1998.)

I was driving back from my weekly pastime in the bucolic exurbs of Boston (taking riding lessons), and got onto to Route 128 to find myself behind a van indicating it was from the “Crime and Death Scene Cleaning” company, with a logo of a hand wiping a bright red swatch.  Ick.  Some of you might want to tuck this piece of information away for future reference.