Goblins In The Mist
Yesterday was the least favorite day of the year for UPS drivers. First, it's Monday. 'Nuff said, except that it is also usually our heaviest day of the week (over the weekend the company actually advances some of our work for Tuesday so it gets here a day earlier, benefiting YOU the customer! You can thank me later...) Next, it's the first workday after the dreaded Time Change; the sun now goes down around 5:30 so we are all working an extra hour in the dark. Some of the luckier guys may have wound up light today and so get done at dusk but my route gets me back at 7:45. That's two hours of headlights as I snake back through the Coast Range. Management must love it and lobbied hard against the extension of Daylight Savings Time that Congress passed recently (first good thing they've done this session!) because productivity jumps as drivers race all day to avoid as much darkness as possible. Of course, this being the first year with our new mandatory lunch hours (in California our DIAD boards are shut down for an hour so we can't do any deliveries, due to a lawsuit and court order) more drivers than ever will be embracing the darkness.
The final dread-of-the-day is that it is Halloween so all the little children of our neighborhood will be swarming around in said darkness. I remember my first year as a driver. I'm going 5 mph along a curving suburban street in heavy fog, kids wearing masks, jonzin with sugar lust, runnin' around all over the place, oblivious to me and me dark, dark truck. Can't we put some temporary day-glo yellow on the trucks? Actually, we should just take the whole day off; UPS can keep the logistics part of the business going for that day, which is their big darling (read Tom Friedman's new book .) Why I am not running the company, I dunno. But it can be hell. The likelihood of your worst nightmare skyrockets, yet the delivery clock still ticks without mercy. If I still worked in town, I'd take the day off. But there's hardly anybody out at the dark far end of my route, in SOmes BaR, just hippies... so it's Ok to keep speeding. No! Just KIDDING. Actually, I'm grabbing my life-saving big cuppa joe at the Salmon River Outpost, getting ready to head back home, when several cars pull up and disgorge a variety of bunnies, princesses, and jedi knights. Out here in the Big Empty, ya gotta trick-or-treat by car if you want to fill your bag before All Saint's Day. The store was staffed by a very obliging witch and everyone left happy.
Do people still worry about the ridiculous urban legends of poisoned candy and razor-blades in apples? I was recently presented with the facts that, according to published crime statistics, no one has been injured by the infamous razor blades and only 2 cases of poisonings were ever prosecuted. Both those cases involved people who knew each other. I was warned about "sick" people who might try this so we would trick-or-treat with this mental picture of which neighbors we might need to triage. We had a lot of lonely pensioners and newly released mental patients living in my Downtown L.A. neighborhood. Who seemed nutty enough to try it? The old ladies that always yelled at us for throwing a ball around too close to their windows or shortcutting through their gardens were obviously haters and would commit murder upon us in a heartbeat. But their houses were dark and shuttered on Oct.31. Apparently they were senile, too, missing such a great chance for malice. The real loony toons were usually sacked out in front of the toob by evening, exhausted from a day of raving and arguing with their voices in the park. A knock usually brought silence or the TV growing suddenly louder. Yeah, I can't hear you either buddy (I was too chicken to try flaming dog-poop as a trick, but as we got older the real get-off-my-doorstep types would get a return visit; remember, there is just one day for treats, but 364 for tricks , heh-heh.) No, the dark-hearted kid poisoners and palate-slicers would blend in, insurgent-style. We'd have to judge on the spot. As the bags grew fuller, however, our judgment lagged. It became a race to see who could max out first so we'd bang on every seedy apt.door, regardless of any subtle clues. Then there would inevitably be some ancient person, perhaps a mustard gassed veteran of The Great War, who would still be getting used to this trick-or-treating thing (did they not have it in the Nineteenth Century?), who would open the door, have a puzzled look, then slow understanding, and shuffle off into the kitchen for about 20 minutes. They would return with a distant smile and hand us.... apples. This was the one! It was all true! We'd take them, from trembling hand to trembling hand, parkinsoned to palpably fearful, thank them, back away, and run home screaming and giggling. We'd sneak a knife out and do a dissection of the weapon under the streetlight in the alley. No razors, no implements of doom, just… an apple. Crap. Well, it had to be poisoned then. So we’d chuck the remains into the crazy old lady’s garden next door. Once, really sweet and friendly old feller gave us dates wrapped in tinfoil. You didn’t have to poison those—you’d get sick just from looking at them. Some people were just unclear on the concept.
I survived my crazy childhood to reach the full flower of crazy middle age and all its anxiety. I heard some hospitals are offering free x-rays of any Halloween treats parents want to bring in (in my day we ate half the stuff while we were still obtaining it, who knew if you would live to see tomorrow, right?). Please. Get a mammogram instead, hmm? Or get yer head examined at least! I hope everybody had fun… we’ll see you down that dark road, somewhere, among the giggles.
The final dread-of-the-day is that it is Halloween so all the little children of our neighborhood will be swarming around in said darkness. I remember my first year as a driver. I'm going 5 mph along a curving suburban street in heavy fog, kids wearing masks, jonzin with sugar lust, runnin' around all over the place, oblivious to me and me dark, dark truck. Can't we put some temporary day-glo yellow on the trucks? Actually, we should just take the whole day off; UPS can keep the logistics part of the business going for that day, which is their big darling (read Tom Friedman's new book .) Why I am not running the company, I dunno. But it can be hell. The likelihood of your worst nightmare skyrockets, yet the delivery clock still ticks without mercy. If I still worked in town, I'd take the day off. But there's hardly anybody out at the dark far end of my route, in SOmes BaR, just hippies... so it's Ok to keep speeding. No! Just KIDDING. Actually, I'm grabbing my life-saving big cuppa joe at the Salmon River Outpost, getting ready to head back home, when several cars pull up and disgorge a variety of bunnies, princesses, and jedi knights. Out here in the Big Empty, ya gotta trick-or-treat by car if you want to fill your bag before All Saint's Day. The store was staffed by a very obliging witch and everyone left happy.
Do people still worry about the ridiculous urban legends of poisoned candy and razor-blades in apples? I was recently presented with the facts that, according to published crime statistics, no one has been injured by the infamous razor blades and only 2 cases of poisonings were ever prosecuted. Both those cases involved people who knew each other. I was warned about "sick" people who might try this so we would trick-or-treat with this mental picture of which neighbors we might need to triage. We had a lot of lonely pensioners and newly released mental patients living in my Downtown L.A. neighborhood. Who seemed nutty enough to try it? The old ladies that always yelled at us for throwing a ball around too close to their windows or shortcutting through their gardens were obviously haters and would commit murder upon us in a heartbeat. But their houses were dark and shuttered on Oct.31. Apparently they were senile, too, missing such a great chance for malice. The real loony toons were usually sacked out in front of the toob by evening, exhausted from a day of raving and arguing with their voices in the park. A knock usually brought silence or the TV growing suddenly louder. Yeah, I can't hear you either buddy (I was too chicken to try flaming dog-poop as a trick, but as we got older the real get-off-my-doorstep types would get a return visit; remember, there is just one day for treats, but 364 for tricks , heh-heh.) No, the dark-hearted kid poisoners and palate-slicers would blend in, insurgent-style. We'd have to judge on the spot. As the bags grew fuller, however, our judgment lagged. It became a race to see who could max out first so we'd bang on every seedy apt.door, regardless of any subtle clues. Then there would inevitably be some ancient person, perhaps a mustard gassed veteran of The Great War, who would still be getting used to this trick-or-treating thing (did they not have it in the Nineteenth Century?), who would open the door, have a puzzled look, then slow understanding, and shuffle off into the kitchen for about 20 minutes. They would return with a distant smile and hand us.... apples. This was the one! It was all true! We'd take them, from trembling hand to trembling hand, parkinsoned to palpably fearful, thank them, back away, and run home screaming and giggling. We'd sneak a knife out and do a dissection of the weapon under the streetlight in the alley. No razors, no implements of doom, just… an apple. Crap. Well, it had to be poisoned then. So we’d chuck the remains into the crazy old lady’s garden next door. Once, really sweet and friendly old feller gave us dates wrapped in tinfoil. You didn’t have to poison those—you’d get sick just from looking at them. Some people were just unclear on the concept.
I survived my crazy childhood to reach the full flower of crazy middle age and all its anxiety. I heard some hospitals are offering free x-rays of any Halloween treats parents want to bring in (in my day we ate half the stuff while we were still obtaining it, who knew if you would live to see tomorrow, right?). Please. Get a mammogram instead, hmm? Or get yer head examined at least! I hope everybody had fun… we’ll see you down that dark road, somewhere, among the giggles.
posted by Ken Malcomson @ 11/01/2005 07:02:00 AM
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