Let me give a bit of background info first.

I live in Connecticut. I’ve lived here all my life and although the taxes here suck, I love it anyway.

Back in 2015 I was trying to find my first job and I had applied to your standard run of the mill stores. I got no bites until I heard through a teacher of mine that one of his friends needed an extra hand working his sugar shack.

In case you have no idea what that is, a sugar shack is the house that you boil down maple sap in to make maple syrup.

I told my teacher that I would love to do this as I had already been learning maple sugaring from this teacher. He helped me set up a time to meet with his friend. Now, I knew at the time who The Monkees were but I really just didn’t put two and two together. I met Peter and he was very nice and he asked me some questions about my skill set and my teacher vouched for my skills (thanks Doug!). I ended up getting the job and I worked for Peter for about two seasons and then moved on but I still saw him every now and again.

The funny thing is that my dad wanted to know who I was working for and I told him what Peter’s name was and my dad didn’t believe me. When I had him drop me off for one of my work days he went and met Peter and my dad kinda geeked out for about half an hour. He eventually left but Peter told me that “I have a really great dad.” I was not aware of his cancer or his medical problems when I knew him. I just knew him as my boss Peter.

When he passed earlier this year I was devastated and I wanted to attend his funeral but I had other shit get in the way.

We will never forget you Peter.

Sincerely, Your loyal employee,

James