Throwback Thursday, Coloring Books For Felons

Throwback Thursday,  Killers, Thugs, and Coloring Books

Copied and pasted from my chicken-fat.com blog Aug 2009

When I first got out of the Navy I went to work for the Atlanta News Agency. The Atlanta News kept most of north Georgia supplied in magazines.

I was a route man. I went into convenience stores, drug stores, or and other stores that sold magazines and took a quick inventory of the magazines that they had on hand. When I turned in my inventories an office staff would quickly go over it and determine what to send each store on their next delivery.

Sometimes they would supply us with books to unload on the stores. They usually were not magazines but books to push off on the people that sold our magazines.

Once they gave me several boxes of coloring books. I think there were almost a thousand coloring books I had to try to sell to some poor store. I quickly found no one wanted the coloring books..  The managers said in so many words, “Don’t come back with them!” 

After talking to other route men I think the idea was to sell them the books knowing full well they would return them for credit in a week or two. In the meantime, in house inventory was performed… and guess what? You don’t have to pay taxes on books and magazine that are not in the building.

So where was I going to unload almost 1,000 coloring books? Nobody wanted them.

The Federal Pen at the end of the Boulevard in Atlanta was on my route. That was my next stop.

Ahah! I wrote out a bill for the number of coloring books and backed up to their loading dock and took them out of the truck. I had the guard sign for it, I gave him his copy of the bill and went on my way, smirking on the long driveway to get the heck out of there.

As far as I know the coloring books were a hit, none were returned.

A couple of years later Anna and I went to an art show at the Federal Pen. Some of the art was fantastic. They didn’t sign their names, they signed their number. The prices were reasonable, so we bought three canvases. 

Who knows, I may have had a hand inspiring them.