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Blogs by Bill Brent
THE WEEKEND SHIFT 10/29/2005 2:32:50 PM
Math 101, Hooterville Style The woodsy hamlet of Rio Nido is so far off the map of hyper-space culture that it’s more Hooterville than Hooterville, a trip down memory lane complete with snaggle-toothed hippies, thin, tanned yoga-mamas, and funny old men who would spend their days rocking on the porch of the General Store -- if Rio Nido was big enough to have one.
Today I went to the Post Office to ship off some book orders. On Saturdays, you can’t ship them from the two larger towns, Guerneville and Forestville, because the post offices are closed. But Rio Nido’s post office is this little local secret, tucked away in the firehouse. It’s open a scant three hours on Saturdays, a place where all the folks who can’t get to their postal business during workday hours can wait in a line to pick up their parcels and ship their own. Right now, though, the firehouse is closed for remodeling, so the post office makes do in a little walk-up trailer across the driveway.
So I put down my book parcels and the first thing I notice is that the daffy old man who works there is missing. His sidekick, a portly middle-aged woman, is there, and often I’ve wondered if she’s his daughter, or maybe his niece. The guy’s pleasant enough, but at times seems more than a tad out of touch, so I figure they put a younger female relative there to keep him in check. Today, though, there’s a pony-tailed guy in the booth with her who looks more like maybe he’s her boyfriend. He’s thin, wears glasses, and has a scraggly gray beard. He weighs my first parcel. “Just over one pound,” he announces. “Okay,” I reply. I’m not really paying attention, since I’m trying to unsnag my remaining parcels from the confines of Safeway’s plastic bag. Besides, I can’t see the scale anyhow.
“This one’s just under,” he mutters, and the woman glances over, and replies, “That’s eleven ounces.” “Oh,” the guy says.
“They’re all about the same,” I add. Most of them are the same book.
“Let me see that,” she says, taking the first parcel and placing it back on the scale. “This one’s only twelve ounces,” she states flatly. “There are sixteen ounces to a pound.”
At moments like this, I remember that the workers at this substation are contractors, not postal employees. Just then, the daffy old man walks up the creaking metal steps behind me. I guess he was out on a pee break. I just hope that, for the sake of the customers, the woman has a stronger bladder than her co-workers.
