Local paper deliverers work hard

I was reminded last week of something that I already knew. Our home-delivery carriers are special people. Most of them are middle-school age boys and girls. Delivering the paper is one of their first jobs.

When one of our carriers came in last Tuesday with her bundles of papers (about 100 in all) and told me she was ill and couldn?t make the route, I decided to do it myself rather than find someone else to do it.

I soon found out it isn?t the easiest thing and takes a bit of perseverance. And it wasn?t even raining or cold outside, plus each paper is heavy.

  • Here is an amazing small-world story I heard when I went to the apparel market with Nancy a few weeks ago.

    One of her sales reps was invited to go to New York to audition for the ?Late Show with David Letterman? for the show-and-tell segment. She took along her sister who lives in St. Louis.

    While they were in the green room waiting to audition, a guy was there waiting to go on, too. The sister told the man he looked familiar and he said she did, too.

    Found out he had installed cabinets in her house in St. Louis a couple of weeks earlier.

  • Our son-in-law?s mother died of cancer last week in Omaha, so we went for the wake and funeral and to support our kids.

    We were about 30 miles outside of Omaha when the car?s voltage light went on. I asked Nancy to look it up in the manual and said it required immediate service.

    I then called local auto dealer Doug Wright, who said there were four possible problems and what we might do about it.

    About that time the lights in the dash started blinking so I decided to pull off the interstate at the next opportunity. Just then the transmission started acting up so I idled up to a convenience store to ask where we might find a garage.

    Luckily, we found a major car dealer up the road and pulled up to the service door just about closing time. I said I knew I had the wrong brand but I did own one of their vehicles back home and asked if they could help.

    Not only did they stay and fix it, they printed a map of how to get to the funeral home and how long it would take to get there.

    It was over-the-top customer service.

    The problem turned out to be extremely corroded battery terminals, so that might be something to check before you head out on the road.

  • Hillsboro High School students excel in more than sports and I thought you might want to check out what some of our technology students are up to.

    Instructor Mickey Harvey at HHS sent me a link for the CO2 drag racing for high school students at the national TSA conference in Nashville.

    Go to www.science-of-speed.com and look under the Showroom heading, then TSA 2007, and there you will find the dragster finalists. They include Isaac Leihy, who finished seventh.

    Also placing at the conference were Evan Just, Neil Kaiser and Lonnie Benda.

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