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 magazine.
I was a route man. I went into a convenience store, a drug store, or some other store that sold magazines and took a quick inventory of the magazines that had on hand. When I turned in my inventories an office staff would quickly go over it and determine what to send the 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..
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, not one was 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.
5 comments:
R
MY FORMER BUSINESS PARTNER, RANDY RANDALL, WAS A VISITOR THERE FOR 5 1/2 YEARS. HE ROBBED THE BANK OF WOODSTOCK AND GOT $2,700.00. HE HAD TO SPLIT IT THREE WAYS WITH HIS ACCOMPLICES THE PIERSON BROTHERS FROM WOODSTOCK. $900.00 EACH. NOT A BAD DAYS WORK.THE YEAR WAS 1963.
P,
My coloring book adventure was July 1965. Randy was probably there then. I hope he enjoyed the coloring books I provided.
ACTUALLY, HE WAS THERE THEN. HE WENT TO THE PEN IN 1963 AND GOT OUT IN 1968.HE USUALLY COMES TO THE BELL GANG REUNION. RANDY NEVER DID ANYTHING ILLEGAL AGAIN AND IS , BESIDES ARNOLD GUEST, THE SMARTEST GUY IN THE BUILDING BUSINESS THAT I KNOW.RANDY SPENT FOUR YEARS IN HILTON HEAD BUILDING WHEN HILTON HEAD WAS AT ITS PEAK IN THE EARLY SEVENTIES.HIS CELLMATE AT ONE TIME WAS MEYER LANSKY, WHO WAS A BID DUDE IN LA COSA NOSTRA.MORE USELESS INFO TO OVERCROWD THE ALREADY OVERCROWDED GRAY MATTER.
The man who lived directly in front of us when we lived in Clayton County was a guard at the Federal Prison, which his wife called 'The Institution.'
A big, burly Irishman, he was suited to the job. One of his favorite expressions directed to uncooperative prisoners was to declare he would make the offender 'pee like a girl.' I guess nowdays, guards are not allowed to make such threats, but that was 1965, too.
Nell,
I had a friend (dead now) who worked at the Pen. He is big burly brash kind of guy. I thought he was suited for the job - then I found out he worked in the accounting department.
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