“A walk?” said Catharine.”One foot in front of the other,” said Newt, “through leaves, over bridges…”
Today is another perfect fall day. We have a bright sun, and the temperature is 66 degrees. The tallest leaves on the trees in the back of the yard are shining in the sunlight, and an every now and then bit of a breeze stirs them. Nala is lying in the sun in her favorite spot. She comes inside panting.
When I was a kid, I walked when I couldn’t ride my bike. I had to walk to and from school. I’d walk uptown to the movie theater on Saturdays. I walked to church on Sundays. I didn’t complain unless it was raining. I hated to spend the day in school with wet, squishy shoes and wet, stringy hair. Back then, my mother didn’t know how to drive so we only had the one car, the one my father drove to work everyday. My mother didn’t learn to drive until we lived on the cape, but when she did, it didn’t matter much to me. I still walked to school everyday.
Every summer when I was in college, I worked at the Hyannis post office. We temps were hired so the regulars could get weekends free. I sorted mail. Behind the sales windows was the open floor where we sorted at different stations for different places. I first worked the main board where all the mail was sorted into stations for further sorting. I was quick so I often ended up with the postcards. I swear there were thousands of post cards on each two foot storage tray, but the problem wasn’t the number. It was the post mark. Because the post cards were thin, they went through the cancelling machine in piles. The top one would be the only one cancelled. I used to throw the uncanceled ones on the floor below my feet. The foreman would pick them up. He never complained to me. He was just happy I’d agree to sort them.
I don’t have a to do list. That seems to be such a burden, sort of being obligated. I might do, but I might not do.
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October 12, 2023 at 2:21 pm
Hi Kat,
Today is cloudy with a high temperature predicted to reach 83°. We may get rain someday soon. October is usually our second wettest month of the year. It just hasn’t materialized yet. 😦
After graduating high school I went to work at a brokerage firm in the financial district of lower Manhattan. It was a terrible and boring job. I worked at the end of a conveyer belt system. Buy and sell paper orders would come towards me on the belt and I had to determine which slot on the belt to send the paper out to the correct location. When I interviewed for the job I lied when asked if I planned to leave at the end of summer and go to college. Of course, in September I quit the job and went to college. When asked why I lied on my interview, I replied that I didn’t lie at the time, but doing this job changed my mind about the importance of going to college to get a better job. I was fired on the spot, but I didn’t care. I never put that boring minimum wage job on my resume. 🙂
October 12, 2023 at 10:24 pm
Hi Bob,
It seems the rains come every weekend, and this weekend will be no exception. It is supposed to rain both days. I have a concert Sunday outside so I expect it to be postponed.
The post office too was a boring job. We’d switch up and do parcel post on the weekends so we could toss packages into the mail bags. We had a contest. Every other day we’d sit on those tilted stools and sort. Sometimes I’d find postcards written out and with the right postage but with no addresses. I’d send them to my friends. The offered me a fulltime job the summer before my senior year in college. I didn’t take it!