My summer adventure hanging paper.............

So I had this little temp gig for a couple of weeks during my hiatus. You know those people who walk around hanging bags of advertisements for siding or cable offers on folks front doors? Well I wasn't doing that, too much walking for my taste, I was however the lazy bastard who drove around making sure the bags get hung on the doors rather than flung from the window of a moving mid 80's Astro Van. Here's how it's supposed to work. Everyone has a gps tracking device so the people running the show somewhere in the southeast united states can pinpoint what area the fliers are being distributed. I would call in and my dispatcher would send me to an intersection and have me cover the immediate area surrounding it. I drive around, spot a few fliers, take down the addresses, call em in, and move on to the next area. Simple enough, yes? No not so much. The problem was the devices weren't moving in the areas they were supposed to be moving in. They were all pinging from one location, as luck would have it that location was just a couple of miles from me, deep in the dank recesses of Independence Meth-zouri.

The lady who was dispatching me asked me to drive to the location from whence they were pinging. I proceeded to the address in old Independence. The house the pings were coming from was a small brick home. The metal awning that graced the front of the bungalow was bent in the shape of a canoe, I'm guessing a tree limb had fallen on it at some point, making it sag to the point you would have to duck to get under the awning to the front door. The grass was about 18 inches high, there were no fewer than 7 cars, most tagless or sporting temp tags, surrounding the little brick shit hole. You all know Im not one to make hasty decisions based on appearance, okay scratch that. You all know I have no problem drawing hasty conclusions based on appearance. This is Independence, Land of the Lost tooth, the city that never sleeps. If it twitches like a meth addict, if it tweaks like a meth addict, if it looks like a meth addict, well it's probably a meth addict.

So I call my dispatcher and tell her that the address the pings came from was the afore described brick shit house. I think I told her they should call the place Camp Sleepy, or some equally wise assed comment. That's the thing about humor, one mans funny is anothers not so funny. She didn't get it, so I explained in layman's terms that she could understand. I described the house, the fleet of 20 odd year old vehicles. I explained that Independence was notorious for painfully skinny folks who imbibe home brewed weight loss products whilst sporting mullets and neck tattoos. As you can imagine, my dispatcher didn't know if I was a wise ass, I am, or just exaggerating,I wasn't. So she asks if I have a digital camera at home. Clearly she didn't know about my mad skillz as the Urban Blight photog of Kansas City. I tell her yes I've got one. She asks if I'll go home and get it, take a few shots of the place and the cars, and send them to her, adding that of course they will pay me for the full day. So I run home, come back, snap a few pics, and call it a day.

Day two. The dispatcher assures me that the people are on track and will be hanging fliers, toot sweet, just hang tight and we will be sending you out. After a couple of hours she calls me back, all of the gps devices are pinging from another location in Independence. The Super Budget Inn, or some such redundant name, is located behind a greasy spoon on 40 highway. Either this pack of chuckle heads were having a two hour romance with some biscuits and gravy or they were all holed up in a room. She sent me home again paying me for the entire day.

Day three she sends me way the hell out to deepest, beige-ist JoCo. She tells me that they are moving in that area as we speak. It didn't take me long to find them. As much as I like to poke fun of my west O state line brethren, I will say that they are clean, neat, and they all look alike. You don't normally see ragamuffin characters walking the residential neighborhoods west of Quivira. They were walking down a tree lined street of manicured lawns, stuffing the fliers in the curbside mail boxes, which is a big no no. But hey, the mail boxes were closer than the front doors. I call in and tell the dispatcher I've located them and when she hears about the mail boxes she is none to happy. She tells me to keep circling the block, tail them so to speak. Bad idea. After they spot my car circling them the 7th or 8th time, they flee the area. I think they got spooked. The dispatcher tells me they all ended back at the house in Independence. I ended up getting paid for two weeks worth of work, and I spent less than 40 hours all told, and I found fewer than 20 fliers. We are starting back up with a new crew Monday. should be a hoot. Meth is a hell of a drug.