Nobody to my knowledge bows to Deval Patrick. And although there has been plenty of rear-end smooching over the years, no one bowed to Mitt Romney, Bill Weld or Paul Cellucci either.

As a follow-up to my Q & A with Jonny Larason, my mentor during my stint as a costumed Pilgrim role player, here’s additional behind-the-scenes insights from the current Plimoth Plantation governor, William Bradford.

Well, technically, he’s governor for life because it is always 1627 at Plimoth Plantation!

Bill Rudder, 32, pictured above adjusting his costume in the Pilgrim dressing room, has been with Plimoth Plantation since 1990. He started as a child volunteer and was hired full time for the Colonial Interpretation Department in 1995. Quoting a co-worker, he jokingly refers to his job as “menial outdoor work in a burlap suit.”

Q: I noticed you bonding with vistors from Austria and Germany, naming what wars they were in the 1600s. How deeply do you dive into Medieval European history?

A: I love history and working in a place that is visited from people all over the world. I have tried to learn as much late 16th and early 17th century history as I can. Not just in the European side but American, African, Asian and some of the South Pacific (not well explored or colonized by our time). It really helps reach out to people for whom English is their second language. Such as asking someone from Japan if they are from Edo? Which is the old name of Tokyo, but it tells that visitor what time period we are in. I fear I know much more on many of these things than a colonist in New Plimoth in 1627, but it is a great teaching tool.

Q: So, on the job, your fellow Pilgrims need to bow to you out of deference to your political and social status. Are they equally respectful in the break room?

A: In that time period, even equals would doff their hat to one another. My co-workers don’t do that on break or after work thankfully, but they will some times call me “GOV.”

Q: These are seasonal jobs, right? What do you do for a living in the offseason?

A: Being a Pilgrim is usually a full-time seasonal job from mid March to the end of November. We work a 40-hour week 9-5 p.m. In the offseason, most of our staff is laid off till the spring. I have in the past worked the offseason in retail at places like Sams’s Club, Claire’s and a local hobby shop. Past jobs have included working overnight security, carpentry, painting and fast food restaurants. I have been fortunate to have year-round work at Plimoth Plantation for several years doing offsite maintance for the museum.

Q: What’s your favorite moment as a Pilgrim?

A: Back in 2007, it was Mayflower II’ s 50th anniversary and we had the honor of the presence of the remaining crew from the original 1957 sail across the Atlantic. To sail aboard her was amazing, even more so was to meet and hear the stories of the crew who really made history themselves. To meet someone who sails across the Atlantic is amazing, but to do so in a ship with no motor or escort or GPS fascinates me.

Q: What keeps you coming back year after year?

A: I love my job. I know that if you were to ask some former employees what they miss the most it would be their co-workers. We are like a family in many ways and some that work here are actual family. Even other staff who I don’t get to work closely with are always smiling and asking how everyone is. We all look after each other so that’s a great comfort.

Q: Any behind-the-scenes snippets you can share?

A: Visitors don’t fully realize the knowledge that everyone at Plimoth Plantation has. Although we do our best to put it all before the public  The expertise here is immeasureable, be it making a chair from a tree or building a wetu (a native house), rigging Mayflower II, hand sewing button holes, maintaining a rare breeds (animal) program, hewing a log into a beam in 90 degree heat, painting the hallways of the Visitor Center and many many more things. Our talented staff, volunteers and interns are what make Plimoth Plantation a world-renowned museum.

Q: Tell me about your Pilgrim wife, Mrs. Bradford, who makes fantastic eggs and onions. Thanks for having me over for brunch, by the way.  Do you feel like you are married?

A: Norah Kyle plays Alice Bradford. This is the first time the two of us have worked out of the same house.  I guess we pull off being married pretty well. I have loosely based our marriage after my own parents’ marriage.  As we change roles every year, we often change our husbands and wives.

Plimoth Plantation remains open through the Sunday after Thanksgiving. For more information, visit http://www.plimoth.org

The top brass at Plimoth Plantation candidly told me that most New Englanders only visit three times in their lives: When they are on an elementary school field trip, when they are a parent, and when they are a grandparent.

I’m still searching for a classic childhood photograph of my parents pretending to choke me and my two siblings as our heads were in the stockade. Parents who try to have a little fun with similar vacation photos today might wind up answering lots of unwelcome questions from their local child welfare agency.

For the record, those wooden stocks are gone. Plimoth has ceded the Puritan punishment culture to Salem’s witch trial museums.

In this week’s Working Stiff column, I reveal what it’s like to be a costumed role player at an outdoor living history museum. I walk the same dirt roads as I did as an elementary school visitor — and adjust to the nuances of rugged landscaping while wearing knee-high stockings with bows keeping them in place.

Despite being nicknamed “Buckleheads” by historical role players at other museums, there are no buckles. Just a gazillion buttons. With rare exceptions, no one is allowed to wear eyeglasses either. Gov. William Bradford is given a pass because he gets severe headaches when his vision blurs.

As my mentor for the day, “Peter Browne,” aka Jonny Larason, puts it: “Just because it’s 1627, it doesn’t mean someone has to die!”

Larason, who’s been with Plimoth Plantation for six years, is in charge of training the village ox and its young calf to be mellow, subservient animal role players. He’s also the brute force behind the repair of all of the village’s crude fencing — which does not come from Trex decking. Every board must be split from tree trunks. Every iron nail must be crafted by hand on-site.

You have to have passion to be a Pilgrim for a nonprofit organization, because the starting pay is $8.80 an hour. And that’s in 2009 money.

Without further ado, here’s a candid chat with my mentor, Jonny Larason, 48, who grew up on a farm in Sharon, Massachusetts…

Q & A WITH PILGRIM JONNY LARASON

Working Stiff: What did you do before you were a Pilgrim?

Jonny Larason: My last job before working at the Plantation was teaching English in Taiwan; they are actually very similar occupations. In both cases, you are teaching people in one culture what it is like to live in a very different culture in what, to them, seems to be a funny accent.

WS: What separates working at Plimoth Plantation versus working at another historical role play museum, such as Old Sturbridge Village or Colonial Williamsburg?

JL: I think we are unique among North American living history museums. Many such museums have at most one or two people in “first person” (as we describe being in character) within a greater museum structure. The strength of our exhibit is our whole site– a complete immersion experience into another culture and time with sights, sounds, smells, people, animals, plants, structures, tools, everything.

Many “first person” interpreters are given a script which, no matter how detailed, cannot possibly give the interpreter the tools to answer the range of interests found among the many different sorts of people we serve every day. We consciously hire staff with different approaches to the work so that visitors can find, among our various voices, one that works for them.

WS: OK, what’s with the confining clothes?  Mobility is definitely compromised.

JL: Like all of our recreated artifacts, our clothes are based on primary source evidence– archeology, surviving artifacts, period descriptions, and paintings from the period. Englishmen in the 17th century had a very different idea of comfort than we have today; they were frequently fearful of drafts and chills, and they were accustomed to wearing restrictive clothing.

You were lucky not to have to dress as the women on our site do. They have to wear corset-like stays which really restrict movement and flexibility. The shoes are and were a real challenge. Shoes and hose (stockings) are documented as among the most frequently desired supplies in the early 1600s, presumably because they wore out so quickly in the rough New World environment.

WS:  You have a great rapport with kids or “servants” as you jokingly call them. What do you want to teach them about child labor back then?

JL: Getting modern kids to help us in our 17th century tasks is both historically accurate and, we hope, fun and engaging for our visitors. The culture of 17th century Europe was very hierarchical and amongst the most important hierarchies was age. Children were expected to wait on their parents at mealtimes and eat after them at the edges of the room away from the table.

This was a world where the child’s life was expected to be devoted to the good of the head of the household– not the converse as we often see today.  So, projecting to our visitors the assumption that children are expected to work and obey is part of our educational function. Hopefully, they way I do it is “gruff” but “charming.”

WS: I assume you don’t do this for the money. What keeps you coming back?

JL: The work we do is physically challenging, intellectually challenging, and creatively challenging. We build real things, cook real food over open fires, take care of real animals, shoot real muskets, and grow real crops in rain, heat, and cold.

Bringing the characters to life within the strict confines of historic accuracy, doing improv theater 40 hours a week, trying to bring something interesting to Japanese tourists, Christian fundamentalists, bored teenagers, Mayflower descendants, and all the other different audiences we serve is a constant creative challenge. I personally most enjoy letting folks understand people in the past as real people with troubles and hopes and hardships and memories and dreams and pettiness and stupidity and nobility and courage.

WS: You were once a shopping mall Santa. Any parallels between playing Peter Browne and St. Nick?

JL: I remember an interview with Michael Keaton when he was appearing in the Batman movie. He described his nervousness in trying to fulfill this iconic image and Jack Nicholson (The Joker) told him to relax, not worry about it, and “let the clothes do the work.”

Being Santa, a godlike being to children AND adults, impressed on me the awesome responsibility of assuming the role that comes with the clothes.  It’s the same at the Plantation.  To me it seems that we are like shaman in ancient cultures; we put on the clothes of the ancestors and speak with their words, and people look to us to bring them the wisdom of the past.

That sounds much more “new age” than any of us who do the work would like to think about it.  But we are aware of the great responsibility of assuming the roles of our characters, and that’s a great motivation to me to continually study and to try to bring the most researched, historically grounded information I can to our visitors.

(Photo Credit: Stuart Cahill, Boston Herald)

imagine buying a brand new Volkswagen bug and finding the plush interior seats crawling with bugs, appropriately beetles!

The above masterpiece, painted on a live June beetle found on a sidewalk, is the brainchild of Pittsburgh artist Emily Berezin. She created the involuntary billboard as satirical commentary, noting she was meticulous about avoiding painting over the beetle’s eyes, nose or mouth.

But now, it turns out that a real European advertising agency is using houseflies to pull mini-advertising banners at tradeshows. Read all about the insanity in this week’s Working Stiff column.

Perhaps this is the one instance where it is OK to kill the messenger!

Oh, and if you think that Emily Berezin’s “Parasitic Advertising” is clever — she also created an Adidas spider, a FedEx grasshopper, and a Pepsi ladybug — you’ll also be fascinated by her cameo as Pittsburgh’s Most Unusual Bag Lady.

Here’s a publicity stunt that could be brilliant bathroom buzz — or a public relations disaster in the midst of paranoia over the H1N1 Virus. I don’t care how clean these restrooms are — they are public restrooms.

Tryouts to be a Charmin Ambassador are next Thursday, so grab a friend and head on down I-95 for the opportunity of a lifetime!

Ironically, this week’s Working Stiff column briefly touches upon the social phenomenon of toilet paper rationing…

The official Procter & Gamble press release:

AMERICA’S FAVORITE TOILET PAPER PROVIDES LUCRATIVE JOB OPPORTUNITY WITH A $10,000 SALARY THIS HOLIDAY SEASON

NEW YORK, Oct. 20 /PRNewswire/ — Today, Charmin, America’s favorite toilet paper brand, launches a national job search to find five outgoing and enthusiastic people to work in New York City’s Times Square Charmin Restrooms this holiday season for a salary of $10,000 each! The five chosen “Charmin Ambassadors” will interact with hundreds of thousands of restroom guests between November 23 and December 31, while getting paid to revel in their own “love of the loo.”

This isn’t your ordinary 9 AM - 5 PM job, and Charmin only asks that candidates should enjoy going to the bathroom so much - whether it be to catch up on reading or just enjoy some “me time” - they never want to leave.

In addition to engaging and entertaining the masses, the five “Charmin Ambassadors” will reveal exclusive, behind-the-scenes news by writing and updating their own blogs and content on Charmin-branded Web sites and popular social media sites; and capturing family-friendly video footage in the space and surrounding areas.

Charmin will conduct open auditions at New York City’s Hilton Hotel on 53rd Street and 6th Avenue on Thursday, November 5 from 10 AM - 6 PM. Judges will be asking candidates to explain why they “enjoy the go” and why they should be selected as a “Charmin Ambassador.”

The winners will be announced at the opening day for the Charmin Restrooms on Monday, November 23. For more details, visit www.EnjoyTheGo.com.

Quite frankly, I’m surprised there is still such a thing as airline peanuts given the seemingly growing epidemic with food allergies.

And I’m confident I’m not the only one that can eat 50 of those packets and still be hungry.

But there’s something quaintly appealing about getting six or seven peanuts shrinkwrapped in foil.

On Southwest Flight 3370 from Manchester, NH to Baltimore, I recently witnessed one of the most innovative breakthroughs in snack distribution.

As the plane took off from the runway and was at a 45 degree angle, the flight attendants at the front of the plane tossed handfuls of peanut packets into the middle aisle and watched gravity take over.  The peanuts slid down the aisle like drinks down the bar at one of those places where the bartender plays shuffleboard with the beer mugs.

Some passengers stretched after the peanuts like kids going after the spoils from a shattered pinata. But most people let the packets slide past them.

The Southwest staff then joked on the intercom that the drinks were coming out next.

Southwest Airlines is infamous for having a loose corporate culture and letting their employees ad-lib in situations that are usually rigidly scripted. I fly them relatively often and have never seen the peanut shtick before.

I’m a big fan.