The artist sold portraits from a sidewalk display.

“How much for this piece?” asked the matron from the Cadillac.

“$25,” the artist said.

“I’ll take it.”

She leaned the canvas against her car while she fumbled for her credit card. Her dog Ruffles sniffed the painting and cocked his leg.

Tom Snethen writes about the humorous saints and scoundrels he worked among during a career as a manufacturing chemist. His stories range from throwing a flaming mattress out of a working brothel’s window to borrowing a bank robber with needed skills from the penitentiary.