Through the Eyes of a Delivery Goddess |
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A half dozen years ago, when we still had North Hills News Records routes, Bob gave me part of his single copy route, which is a route that delivers to stores and coin boxes. As I've mentioned in the past, News Records were delivered overnight on weekends. I was living alone, and had just gotten a 6 year old pug from the Humane Society. I was trying to keep Albert with me since I figured he'd been through a lot of trauma over a 72 hour time period, from losing his original family, to being shipped off to the shelter, being nuetered, then being sent to a new home with a "new family" (which was just me, instead of the family of six from which he came). I bought a cage and put it in the back seat of my truck so Albert could ride with me during my 7 or 8 hours of newspaper delivery until he was used to me. He was pretty quiet for the first few days,finally by the third or fourth day, he actually started to whine. I figured he must finally be hungry, so I went through a drive through to get him some chicken nuggets, hoping to hold him over until we got home. When the speaker from the drive through started to talk ... Albert went NUTS. Obviously, his former family frequented drive throughs. A few weeks after Albert came to live with me, I brought home a pizza, and he about mauled my ankles. Again - this dog was used to fast food. I found these traits amusing, and possibly a contributing factor to his larger-than-normal-for-a-pug stature.  One night, while delivering the News Records in Millvale, I had just pulled away from a coin box situated in front of a self storage facility. Suddenly, the red and blue police lights lit up my rear view mirror. It took the cop what seemed like a few extra minutes to get out of his car and approach my truck. He had is back to the side of my truck, (I had a cap on my truck bed, so he could not really see through my back window) side-stepping his way to the driver's window with his gun drawn, but pointed about 60 degrees toward the ground. I turned on the interior light, but did not reach for my license, which was buried under Albert's cage in the back. I had the glove box door open to grab my insurance card when asked, but with his gun drawn, I decided not to make any quick movements inside the cab of the truck. When he got to my window, he was breathing heavy from the adrenalin rush. He kept his gun pointed toward the ground, and popped his head around into my window while spinning around to face me. I could hear him breath a labored sigh of relief ... he said, "You're delivering newspapers...", seeing the stack of papers in my passenger's seat. His arms relaxed, and he put away his gun. He took a step forward and kind of leaned into my truck, looking into the back seat to see Albert nonchalantly panting, probably wondering why the flow of cool air had ceased. The cop said, "Oh My GOD, it's a DOG!!". Confused, I said, "Uh... yah.." He went on to explain, "Last night, someone cut open most of the padlocks on the doors at the storage facility you just pulled away from. We figured somebody was coming back tonight with a truck to start cleaning out storage units, and an eye-witness from last night said they thought they saw a rust colored or dark orange-ish truck sitting here for awhile, right around 4am. When you pulled out of there in this truck, [my truck was burgundy], I thought we had our man - and as I got out of my car, I thought I could see an accomplice in the back seat ducking down below eye level. I must have seen the shadow of your dog in the back window." I turned around to my unconcerned pooch and said, "Hear that Albert? You're an accomplice!!! Where's my cut of the action?" The cop chuckled and appologized, not only for pulling me over while I was working, but for probably scaring me with his "ready for action" approach. I thanked him for doing his job, and keeping folks like me, out in the middle of the night a bit safer. As I rearranged everything in the front seat of the truck to continue my delivery, I could hear him get on the radio and say, "You're never gonna believe this - it was a paper boy and her dog... that's all. Boy, do I feel stupid". I pulled out and blew my horn while waving my arm out the window. I'm glad that guy wasn't too trigger happy - not sure if he'd have shot me, or my pug-partner in crime! |