Sign of the Times

With most of the stores in town closed today, Sundays are a good day to sit and relax. I just wish I had my Sunday Times to read. The online version doesn't seem to work and they are forever telling me that a system administrator has been notified.







I guess they can't figure it out, or maybe there is nobody left working in that department due to all the layoffs. Looks as though I will be cancelling my subscription to the Times after 32 years.


It was one of my first jobs, delivering papers for the Times in downtown LA. I was 18, had a new truck and new payments. It was tough getting out of bed at 3 or 4 in the morning, seven days a week, so you could fold or package all the papers on your route and get them delivered by 6:30AM. But it was also interesting, seeing the big city so quiet, not to mention all the strange folks out at time of the morning.


It's funny how life works, but it was through that job, delivering the Times, that I met another gentleman, Carl Conklin, and that meeting would change the direction of my entire life. He told me a company that he was working for, was looking for a messenger to pick up and deliver files, payroll checks, etc, to their offices around the greater LA area. This company delivered the Yellow Pages to your door in various cities throughout the US. One of my stops would be at the Pacific Bell building in the mid-Wilshire district of LA.


It was there, that a year later I applied to become a clerk at Pacific Bell (Ma Bell/AT&T), and to work in that same mid-Wilshire office. Thirty years later, and 5 name changes later (AT&T, Pacific Bell, Pacific Telesis, SBC, and then back to AT&T), I retired from the same company I hired on to as a 20 year old, AT&T. I guess the more things change, the more they remain the same.


I'm sorry to see the dire straits that our newspapers around the country are facing, and some do first rate reporting, but I can't see paying for something I can't read while I'm here in Belize. Maybe I'll start the paper again when I return home, but some how, I don't think so. I don't really miss all the bad news and I have become blissfully ignorant. I can see how Belize is already changing me. Is it time for a Belikin yet? It's got to be noon somewhere.