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Mailman Reprieve
The Mail man came whistling happy down the street,
He’s usually pretty grumpy, boy this was really neat,
Mister, what’s got you so fired up, I’ve never seen you quite like this,
You’d never guess what the town council did, it’s just heavenly bliss,
It was an open meeting like a Hell you wouldn’t believe,
Some folks there were throwing chairs, I had to get up and leave,
I’ve suffered many problems and testified before,
You remember Miss Avery and her mail box door,
Claimed I was just like every other man she knew,
Didn’t close the mail box and left the toilet seat up too,
Boy that caused a mess, you can imagine what they thought,
And all the terrible rumors and claims that it brought,
You’ve heard that old line, Rain or shine , sleet or snow,
It’s never been easy or pretty you know,
In spite of all problems , the mail must go through,
But this poor old mailman had to go too,
Miss Averey’s house was the next in line,
And I thought things worked out just fine,
Neighbors were nasty ,thought we had something going,
Yeah, I’d say we did, toilet was overflowing,
Well back to the big Council question at hand,
I done said my piece, they know where I stand,
There was ranting and raving as voting got near,
We didn’t have a prayer, we had lost it I fear,
But there’s joy in every mail room today,
Never thought they’d do it or see things our way,
But now man I’m happy , I’m not a walking “T” bone ,
My route is now posted WATCH DOG FREE ZONE!
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Ron
Anyway, I was the poor son of a widowed school marm and they started all the new delivery kids at the very bottom of the newspaper pecking order, which meant that I found myself covering the route through that 'wrong side' I mentioned above! As it so happened in those days, that 'wrong side' of the track part of town was inhabited mostly by poor black folks who all, it seems, had a very mean (probably also hungry) pitbull-type dog. And in many cases there was no fenced-in front yard, so as I rode by each house and lobbed a paper, I was prime-meat for whatever dogs were around when that paper came sailing overhead, each day. Racial bias was so strong back then that only those poor black folks lived in that 'wrong side' across the tracks and even the poorest of the post-Dust-Bowl 'white trash' and the Chicano migrant workers lived in the 'right side' area!
Anyhow, those dogs all seemed to have had a taste for tender young Honky flesh, since after a year or so I ended up with quite a few battle-scars on my lower extremities. But worse yet, I also had to go door-to-door to collect the monthly news delivery fee each month and that was ALWAYS a trauma-filled undertaking! After a year of this, I had had enough and managed to find a much better part-time job in the local fruit-packing sheds during summer break! No mean dogs there!
Don't get me wrong, Tom...I love and have always loved dogs. I just never liked involuntarily feeding them 'human treats' instead of suitably doggie-type food! [Believe me, I can therefore emphatically empathise with your happy postman in this abbreviated tome of yours!] -K2