Bags and bags of springs, their ends straight, with the springy part in the middle. My pay depended on the pound of completed bent springs.

It was a monotonous task, but one I could manage from home, offering flexibility in my hours. There seemed to be an insatiable demand for precisely bent springs. For months, it was the same routine, until one day, a new jig arrived with slightly heavier springs, ushering in a change.

A “jig” was the machine responsible for bending and clipping the ends of the raw springs. I merely had to insert the spring and press the pedal on the floor. Arms would swing into action, bending and clipping the wire. All I had to do was drop it into the completed bucket and insert another spring. It was repetitive, hypnotic, and surprisingly profitable.

In the 60s, there weren’t many job opportunities for teenagers with long hair. Businesses were wary of hiring “hippies” or radicals. But for me, it worked out just fine.

I landed this gig through my sister-in-law, who outsourced her spring making. She obtained her springs from a weathered old man she had “adopted”. He was likely in his eighties, with gnarled fingers, stooped shoulders, and a shuffling gait, speaking broken English with an Italian accent.

Amadeo, the middleman, supplied the portable electric jigs and the specified weight of the springs. I assumed he shipped the final products to factories or warehouses.

But Amadeo was more than just a supplier. He was a genuine spiritualist, specifically a Faithist, believing in the “New Bible”, a text published in 1882 by a dentist in New York City.

The book, titled “Oahspe”, was said to have been “automatically” typed over several years, guided by spiritual forces. With the typewriter being a recent invention, the spiritual forces must have been thrilled.

Amadeo often lingered for a few hours when delivering supplies or picking up springs. It was his opportunity to share about Oahspe and its impact on his life.

As a subcontractor, I felt it was polite to excuse myself and return to bending springs. Although I did receive a broken English translation of Oahspe, I needed to focus on earning money, so I politely declined further discussions.

Amadeo left a copy of his “New Bible”, a thick tome of around 1500 pages, filled with cosmic charts and color portraits of saints in turbans, giving it a distinctly Persian feel.

Years later, with Amadeo gone and my spring-bending days behind me, “Oahspe” remained on my bookshelf. During a visit, a friend noticed the book, she abruptly turned around, and left, another date gone awry.