Odds and Ends

RACINE, Wis. (AP) - Just sipping a brewski gave Isac Aguero a career hangover.

Aguero, 24, said he was fired from his job with a Miller Brewing distributor, the same day a picture appeared in The Journal Times of Racine of him drinking a Bud Light, which is brewed by rival Anheuser-Busch Co.

The photo, taken Feb. 5, was part of the newspaper's weekly "On the Town" feature, which depicts the city's night life.

Aguero, who had been a forklift operator at CJW Inc. for four years, told the newspaper he was informed by co-workers when he arrived at work last week that he was in trouble because of the picture.

He said he was called into the general manager's office and told he was fired. Aguero said he was not given a reason and claimed he never had problems with his bosses.

"It was a Saturday and I wasn't at work," he told The Journal Times. "They can't tell me what beverages I can drink. Bud Light's my beer of choice, I always drink that. Just because I work there, do I have to change what I drink?"

Thomas Bey, a CJW sales manager, read a statement to The Associated Press on Friday and would not answer any questions. He said the company does not publicly discuss past or present employees.

"We consistently remind our employees that drinking alcohol is entirely a personal decision," Bey said. "The image and reputation of any company is determined in large part by the way its employees are seen to behave. Our employees can and should be our best ambassadors."

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WECOTA, S.D. (AP) - The sign said it all: "Wecota, Pop. 19. We're all here because we're not all there."

That is until earlier this month, when somebody stole the sign that had been bolted to a wooden fence on the west side of the Faulk County village since September.

But Wecota townsfolk are nothing if not clever.

It turns out that part-time Wecota resident Dave Griffith, who came up with the idea for the sign, had ordered two of them - just in case something happened to the first one.

Resident Jerry Barondeau said the second sign will go up, and this time, it will be welded into place.

Griffith paid for the signs, as well as the town's first street signs - one for each of Wecota's two streets.

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DURHAM, N.C. (AP) - When Albert Sack buys furniture, he doesn't skimp.

The antiques dealer just spent $7.5 million on a mahogany tea table - the second-highest price ever paid for a piece of American furniture.

"As long as it is great, there's no price too great for a masterpiece," Sack said of his purchase at a Jan. 22 auction at New York's Sotheby's auction house.

The table is one of only four of its kind made by the noted 18th century craftsman John Goddard of Newport, R.I.

The final hammer price was $7.5 million. With fees, the total cost was $8.41 million.

In acquiring the Goddard table, Sack, 89, followed in the footsteps of his father, Israel Sack, a one-time New York furniture dealer who helped pioneer the collection and appreciation of historic American furniture.

In 1989, Israel Sack paid $12.1 million for a secretary's desk that once belonged to Brown University founder Nicolas Brown - a record for American furniture that still stands.

Sack is having the Goddard table shipped from New York and has not yet decided whether he will use it.

"Collectors use their furniture, their silver, they just use it carefully. Decorative arts were made to be used as well as to be beautiful," he said.