Spring. That season of hope and renewal when our fancies turn towards tax returns. What soulless bastard decided to schedule tax day for the spring?

April is the time for the red red robin to come bob bob bobbin' along (as the crooner on the old shellac record on my grandmother's Victrola put it) instead we are attacked by flocks of tax forms.

Okay, Mary's the one who has the annual death-cage match with Killer 1040 and the rest of his gang. It's bad enough what we have to pay, but they have to make it hard to figure as well. What good's injury without a little insult thrown in?

Self-employed writers have some extra hoops to jump through at tax time since we don't fit into the normal cubbyholes.

(Wait did I just take Mary out of the wrestling cage and put her in the circus? Talented isn't she!)

Perusing the colorless list of occupational codes in the IRS 1040 form instruction booklet, Mary's attention began to wander and she started to think about jobs that were once common street sights.

Where now might be seen cats-meat men, organ grinders, jugglers and dancers, roving silhouette cutters or menders of umbrellas?

Thus inspired, she proceeded to write the essay that appears in Kings River Life:

Grinding Out A Living