Dearly Departed . . .

We are short at least one, maybe two, 2012 calendars.

We could (1) go to a bookstore and buy how many calendars we need that are surely marked down now. Or we could (2) visit a funeral home and pay our respects to the deceased’s family, then sign the register book , pick up one or two of their new calendars and politely leave. If someone ask are we friends of the deceased or related I will say, “What about the Dawgs!”


Again, we better not.

While my wandering mind thought up the above plot it reminded me of the below:

Billy worked at the Atlanta Post Office, in the basement sorting parcels. Billy was a tall middle aged man that had sort of goofy personality who never met a stranger. Billy’s work station was near the elevator and he struck up a conversation with any one waiting on the elevator.


I was a timekeeper and at certain times had to go to all three floors of the Federal Annex at reporting times and pull the cards of the employees who didn’t show up. On my route of covering all three floors I had to stand in front of the elevator and wait on it and talk to Billy.

Through the years I learned that Billy was single and an avid reader. His forte’ was mostly westerns books. He lived with his mother.

Billy also told me he and his mother had a hobby they jointly did together. He and his mother would study the obituaries in the paper. I don’t know what guidelines they went by, but couple of times a week they visited funeral homes to pay their respects to complete strangers – and get this: take a snapshot of the deceased. He bragged on their big collections of photographs of dead people lying in caskets.

I found a new route.