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Reading the post about the missing Baby Doll Banner puts me in mind of Earl Smith, who delivered UPS on Block Island. Earl was a skinny old fellow somewhere between 90 and 190 years old, and hunchbacked. Nevertheless he was a remarkable physical specimen, incredibly strong. Up until his death in 1992 or 3 he still had the UPS route, and a contract to collect the trash cans for the Town. I personally saw that frail-looking old man pick up 55 gallon drums full of trash and heave them up on the back of a flatbed truck - go try that sometime, then do it all day, three days a week. Earl lived on one of the Island's last real farms, and had cows and chickens, which leads into the $1000 dog story, but that's for another time. He sold farm and garden stuff - fertilizer, chicken feed, etc. - and then there was UPS, which filled up most of his time. The way UPS works out there, they don't have a truck or driver of their own, so they contract final delivery. The UPS truck delivers to the ferry dock in Point Judith, and the freight is locked into big steel boxes, which get loaded with the forklift. On arrival to BI the boxes are forklifted onto the dock, and Earl would unlock them and transfer all the packages into his yellow Ford box truck. Most Island stores and gift shops got their merchandise shipped UPS, so in summer there was a hell of a lot of freight. Then there was all the residential stuff - folks would be there just for the summer, and order stuff from Lands End or LL Bean, shipped to their Island house - but the only addresses on BI are the fire numbers on the house, and a lot of tiny dirt backroads had no name, or had more than one - so Earl had an awful time figuring out what went where and to whom. Consequently, lots of stuff never found its destination. The customers didn't care - they'd re-order or cancel or forget - so these packages would end up in limbo, which on Block Island, meant Earl would put them down cellar at his house. If you knew Earl and asked him he'd go looking for it for you, but Earl wasn't exactly a warm-n-fuzzy approachable kind of guy. He rarely spoke, and while he wasn't unfriendly, asking him a question would likely get you a laconic "Yup", "Nope" or "Don't know". Then there was Earl's driving. Earl would hunker down over the wheel of that yellow box truck and roll along at a steady 15 mph, with occasional reckless downhill bursts of 25. If you were at an intersection and saw Earl's truck coming, you had plenty of time to get out of the way, and you'd better. Earl never saw a stopsign worth stopping for. You'd look up and see this looming yellow monster of a truck, bearing down with the slow, majestic inevitability of an ocean liner, and through the windshield you'd see two knarled old hands gripping the wheel, and a pair of ancient eyes peering out under the curled brim of a faded blue ballcap. I don't think Earl ever drove on the mainland - for that matter, no one could remember the last time Earl had been off-Island. Whether or not he actually held a driver's license was a question that was never asked. He was just Earl, and Earl delivered UPS, and that was that. When Earl passed away - according to his nephew Rick, "he just woke up dead one morning" - his relatives went through his things, and found the cellar full of several tons of undeliverable UPS packages. According to them, there were packages dating back to the sixties. UPS sent inspectors, and they came out of Earl's cellar shaking their heads in disbelief. One of them called it the "black hole of the New England district" - packages went in, and never came out. That wasn't quite true. Earl would go look for a package if you asked, but hardly anyone ever asked. The UPS tracking system only went as far as those metal boxes on the ferry - from that point your package was in the hands of God and Earl. So if UPS says they can't find the Baby Doll Banner, tell them to go check Earl Smith's cellar.
------------------ "A wise man concerns himself with the truth, not with what people believe." - Aristotle
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. - Raoul Duke (Hunter S. Thompson)
Cam Finest Kind Signs 256 S. Broad St. Pawcatuck, Ct. 06379 "Award winning Signs since 1988"
Posts: 3051 | From: Pawcatuck,Connecticut USA | Registered: Nov 1998
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Me thinks that Earl's sister works the counter in our local UPS. Real un-friendly sort, if ya know what I mean!
------------------ Jackson Smart Jackson's Signs Port Angeles, WA ...."The Straits of Juan De Fuca in my front yard and Olympic National Park in my backyard...
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Posts: 1001 | From: Port Angeles, Washington | Registered: Jan 1999
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