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.

It Takes All Kinds

On regular network TV there are at least three organizations that have commercials which depicts the consumer, or customer, falling in love with the person of an organization because of the wonderful service. Lowes’, Sears, and the Postal Service have commercials of that sort.

Each time the employee of the company seems a little taken back and embarrassed but the consumer just can’t help him or herself – they are so overcome with such an unexpected excellent service or product.

There is one lady out there somewhere that makes me identify with the Postal Service commercials of that type.

She was a little hollow woman that always seemed to not know what she was doing and craving for some human attention. I imagined her husband and children completely ignored her.

When I worked on the window at the Postal Service once she came to my window and I politely waited her and I listened as she talked and I threw in my 2¢ on whatever she was taking about. She was overwhelmed with my kindness.

She wouldn’t shut up. She found someone nice that listened to her.

I forgot the details but over several weeks we came to my window many times and each time during a crowded time during long lines which would naturally irritate the people in line, seeing us talk about nothing important while they had to stand on their feet and wait and wait until the next available clerk was available.

Some fellow clerks knew the situation and when came up and started yapping they would come up and tell me of some reason I had to leave the window like the postmaster was on the phone wanting to talk to me, or they needed me to help with the dispatch or some other white lie for me to detached from her.

The little woman and her family were moving back to their hometown in Ohio. Gad, I wished they would just go ahead and move.

Then one day I ran into her in a store. She walked up to be and started yakking as always and I looked at her rudely, and walked quickly away. She looked at me puzzled and that was the end of our relationship. I don’t think I ever saw her again.

Now, just to make it interesting, the Gods added a little spice: A lady who worked elsewhere in the building by the name of Jackie told me she lived next door to the little woman-nut.

Wait! There is more: Jackie’s aunt and uncle (Frankie and Al) lived almost across from me. Just across the street and one door down.

Wait, there is more: Frankie and Al were sick of our neighbors. They were always imposing on them, borrowing things, and just walking into their house without knocking and helping themselves to whatever they needed… evidently Al made the mistake of saying something like, “What is mine is yours.”…. be careful what you say.

Frankie and Al discovered a house next door to their niece Jackie was for sale. The looked at it and liked it even more because their niece owned a swimming pool. They bought it.

They closed out the deal and almost everybody were ready to move but the lady-nut refused to leave. The movers came, got their furniture and left for Ohio. The family pleaded for the lady-nut to get in the car and she refused…she was talking incoherently. Finally they left without her.

That sounds cruel, but as the Joe South said, you have to walk a mile in someone’s shoes. Maybe they knew she needed help but their HMO didn’t cover mental problems.

If I remember right somehow she talked Frankie and Al to sleep in her old basement one night only. I think they had to get the law to remove her and they realized they were dealing with someone detached from reality and put her in the hospital

I think she made another appearance or two at her old house but she was shooed away without getting ugly.

It takes all kinds to make the world go around.

Lee

Before I worked for the Marietta Post Office I was a Data Technician at the Atlanta Post Office for about 14 or 15 years.

Our department had worked 24/7 and had 37 people in it. Our job was to see that the 8,000 Atlanta Postal employees were paid correctly. We did this by computerized manipulation before there were personal computers. We used what we called transactors and plastic hole punched cards that each card represented an employee. We would put the Holarath coded card into a card reader of the transactor and make whatever adjustments or data entries that needed to be made by changing digital dials.

We had reason to be out on the work room floor many times to talk to supervisors and employees. We knew a good portion of the mail distribution clerks on all three shifts because that who we saw the most.

In the central office we worked at also was the main place for semi-automatic mail sorting by the LSM clerks running the LSM machine.

The LSM machine was a huge long machine that had on one side 12 seats with a console at each seat. The LSM clerk would sit in the chair and by air suction at the end of a mechanic arm, quickly place a letter in front of the clerk and he would glance at the letter and key in where that letter would go. It is according to what section he is working in as to what would be keyed. If it just came in the door the LSM machine would be set up for states. The next machine would be Georgia. The next metro Atlanta,, and the next Atlanta, to one of the 50 plus stations. A LSM clerk had to key a minimum of 100 pieces of mail per minute. That is more than 1 and 1/3 per second.

I think now the LSM machines are antiques. Now, only very few LSM machines are around. Most of the mail are read and sorted by opt scanning, most of it is untouched by human hands now. Only the hard to read mail gets human attention.

We never got to know to know often the quiet regular employee who would report to work, never late or never call in. Only the ones that we had to adjust his time is who we dealt with and got to know, plus the ones that marched to their own drummer – we got to know them too.

One marcher-to-his-own-drums was a hyper guy named Lee. Lee, they said, was a genius and had several degrees in something that had any no money earning power at all – something like the mathematical theory of genetics as to defining what a person is going to be in life, based on his genetic make up. He was a PHD in his field.

Doctor Lee had his own drummer.

He was tall with not an ounce of fat on him. He was young looking with a crew cut. I think he had a crew cut because it reflected less care. He constantly clapped his hands as if he was flushing his highly energized flashes away. If you tried communicating with him about the only response you would get is: I’m fine thank you or Yes or No, I don’t know. Nothing substantial like you really talked to the guy. He always wore baggy pants and a white shirt. He never smiled.

He worked through his breaks, including his lunch break. When it was time to get off, he would almost hurriedly past by his co-workers clapping his hands, to slap away that energy that was building up constantly.

Lee talked to himself. If you walk by him you would hear him constantly talking to himself as he keyed the mail zipping past him.

To make things a bit more interesting, he not only talked to himself, but he talked to THEMSELVES. He had a several people living in his brain. We listened to him enough and put our information together to come up with conclusion that he had his own voice, a very masculine deep voiced guy, a woman that was very temperamental, and a kid. When Lee Masculine would have a fierce argument with Lee Feminine another voice, of a child would start singing very loudly to drown out the other two voices arguing.

One night a new employee was assigned to work next to him and after about four or five hours of the four voices playing tricks on one another, singing, fussing, arguing, the girl went home sick, she couldn’t take it anymore. She asked for a transfer to another group to get away from what she thought was a mad man.

I was watching Monk on TV tonight and I thought of Lee. I haven’t seen him since the mid-80s since I transferred from Atlanta…. But I bet he still walks full speed, clap his hands and has at least four voices in his head trying to be heard.