There’s nothing like the tactility (is there such a word?) of skin-to-paper contact with coffee as a chaser. It’s been my passion for decades.
Let me explain:
Few people will disagree about the benefits of having a morning newspaper with their morning coffee. It’s a natural. And those lacking a morning paper — well, what do we do? Do we save last evening’s newspaper and treat it as if it where a morning paper?
I’m referring to recent changes at the Albuquerque Journal that somehow made my neighborhood, the Camp Luna area, off-limits for home delivery. The policy change came up suddenly, so today I write this column without the benefit of having seen the metropolitan daily this morning while in PJ’s.
Saturday, I received a recorded phone message from the Journal circulation department, announcing that the next day, Sunday, I was to receive no paper. Instead, a rebate check for my paid-up subscription would arrive soon. Well, that was small comfort. How do the Albuquerque Journal-ists expect subscribers to swallow their coffee without a newspaper in hand?
My daily routine up to Sunday was simple: Start with the sports page to re-discover how the Golden State Warriors turned LeBron James and his Cleveland Cavaliers into ectoplasm; then to the Dear Abby section and the various puzzles; next comes the front section with the day’s news, ending with the editorial page.
My approach is to treat a newspaper like a meal: Go through everything first, then treat the letters to the editor and the editorials like dessert.
Though in my 16th year with the Optic, I find it quite a stretch to consider the Journal “the competition.” No paper in the state can compete with the metropolitan daily based in a city with 30 times our population. It wasn’t long ago that the Journal notified readers that the Journal North portion of the paper would change from six days a week to two.
Of course, the Journal’s editors put a happy smile on the announcement, explaining the planned improvements, but in my opinion, they never came. Since the modifications to Journal North, there’s been scant reference to anything Meadow City-ish, except for smatterings on the Highlands Cowboys, Robertson Cardinals and West Las Vegas Dons.
Like many other Las Vegans affected by the Journal’s discontinuing delivery to “out-of-zone” areas, I called the circulation department with my appeal. I explained that the carrier we had until last week had to have been the world’s best. We missed perhaps two issues in several years, and one time, when we failed to find our paper in its plastic tube, we discovered that our neighbors had had overnight guests, and one visitor, in an act of kindness, took our paper out of its box and presented it to her hosts.
It was nice of the houseguest, but she picked the wrong house.
Do mornings without a newspaper cause some kind of coffee withdrawal? Will my morning cup, with a spoonful of hazelnut syrup stirred in, begin to taste like dishwater? What perils await? Asking around, I learned that three people — Matt Sandoval, Cordell Halverson and Joe McCaffrey — did receive their papers, at least Sunday and Monday. Why them? Does residing inside the city limits confer special privileges?
Apparently out-of-zone refers to outsiders like my fellow Luna-ites. At Charlie’s Restaurant Monday morning, I espied a man intently reading the Journal. He finished it, put it aside, then went to pay his bill. At the time I didn’t know whether the Journal’s decision meant that no copies of the paper would come this far north.
My aim was to borrow, but not steal the man’s copy, left on the table. I waited until I could no longer see him, to make my move. But he returned to the table.
I feared there might be a confrontation, but he had returned merely to leave a tip. He gave me a nod which told me it was all right to commandeer his copy. I opened it appreciatively — only to discover it was the previous Friday’s newspaper that I had copped.
My payment for an online subscription will probably cross in the mail with the refund check due me. Fair enough, but reading the news on a screen just isn’t the same.
If this seems like a plea to help me form a support group for long-time home-delivery addicts — I’ve been a regular subscriber for more than 40 years — then so be it. I meant it when I sent a note assuring my regular carrier that I’d be his best customer. I’d often attach the note to a Christmas gift certificate to a local restaurant, and sometimes include a twenty.
It’s strange that I never met my paper deliverer. But like clockwork, he’d come before dawn, bringing my morning “fix.”
If anybody knows or sees the man who used to deliver our paper, please tell him that a grateful customer in Camp Luna has another gift certificate with his name on it — along with thanks for having been a reliable carrier.
• • •
My son, Stanley Adam, apparently has — literally — picked up some of his dad’s pickiness toward language and its misuses. In a post this week, Stan sent a Facebook mugshot of a movie star with a caption, “Top 10 actresses that will literally take your breath away.”
My son’s response: “Really? Are they going to sneak into my bedroom and smother me with a pillow? Are they going to waterboard me? How are they — literally — going to take my breath away?”
I posted that on Facebook not so much to be picky about language, but to leave clues to help identify the culprits in the event that it turned out that “literally” was being used correctly.