911

I deliver the Sunday Final Edition in the very early morning, on Saturday night/Sunday mornings.  Traffic is pretty light, and I usually don’t get moving until after the bars close; I haven’t had any near misses with drunk drivers.  Driving around at that time of the morning, I’ve seen some interesting things, and it’s kinda cool to be out and about when most everyone else is asleep.

My route is in Southeast Portland, and I cover Powell Blvd. from the Ross Island Bridge to SE 39th ave and turn south there and go down through the Eastmoreland neighborhood around Reed College and then cruise over to Sellwood, my neighborhood, and back north to Powell.  My route covers basically a square of the SE Portland area.  On Sunday mornings, I diviate from my route and cover the Milwaukie Ave. stops first, because I stop at the QFC market (24 hrs) and get rid of 60 papers there and grab a cup of coffee from their hotpots – a cup that is welcome at zero dark thirty.  I continue down Milwaukie to the Plaid Pantry and then go over to 13th ave and run the stops there; small stores and street racks and  the Starbucks at the corner of Tacoma.  I have another big drop at New Seasons, an organic supermarket, and then continue south, over to 17th ave (my street) and hit my southernmost stop, Foster’s Market, where I drop off 30 papers.  Ususally, I just drive on darkened streets and go about my business.

This Sunday was not the usual day.  When I got to Foster’s, I saw that their glass front door had been shattered, and the old newpaper boxes I lock their papers into had been thrown out into the parking lot.  The glass door hadn’t been broken enough for anyone to get inside, but there was broken glass all over the inside of the market.  I don’t have a telephone number for the owner, but I wanted to let someone know about this.  The public phone right there had been broken too (you know how tough those handsets are, right?  Totally fucked up) so I pulled out my cell phone and woke up the boss to tell him.  He didn’t have their number handy, so he told me to call 911 and report it to them, which I did.

I’m not the kind of guy that keeps quiet about stuff like this; I have a cell phone and use it.  Once, standing out on my balcony and looking over towards the bar on the corner, I saw some guy, an adult for sure, beating the shit out of a kid – his son sent to get him? and I immeadiately called the police, who were there in minutes (I thought that was pretty damn fast).  He got a ride downtown.

Once, when I was stationed in Philadelphia with the Navy, a buddy of mine and I had driven into New Jersey and had seen a guy beating up a woman on the street.  Of course, we pulled over and put a stop to it, but we were feeling a little wierd about it when both the man and the woman started giving us hell for interrupting their arguement.  Wtf?  I like to think I have integrity, and try to do The Right Thing, so the other day, I called 911 and gave them my name and location and a description of the damage and offered to wait till the cops came.  They told me I could go in my way,that they’d already gotten some reports about the area, and that the cops were on the way as we spoke, so I shrugged and drove on, hitting two more stops on 17th, going north.

A police car passed me, his red and blue lights strobing the morning darkeness, so I turned around and followed him back to Fosters, parked, and got out and found an elderly couple talking to the cops.  The couple had heard the noises made by breaking glass, and told of a guy yelling and cursing as he broke the store’s door, the phone, 4 windows in the Thai restaurant next door, and that he had pitched a rock through the front windsheild of a Toyota Matrix parked on the street.  There was thousands of dollars of damage done.

I gave a statement and continued on my route, thinking about mayhem and dickheads and grateful that my van, in it’s lot up the street, hadn’t been damaged too (I checked).  I finished my route, parked the stepvan, and went home, crashing into bed almost right away.  In the late afternoon, I went over to A & J’s house, who told me that the stores and the restaurant had been in the news, and asking me about it.  I ate dinner with them and came home in time to catch the ten oclock news and saw the elderly couple interviewed and the cameras panned over the damage.

A guy had been caught.  Reportedly, he was a heroin addict who’d gotten angry and had taken it out on all kinds of things, like the store I deliver to, my racks, the car on the street, the Thai restaurant, and other things I hadn’t seen myself.  They got him though, and he was in jail awaiting a hearing in the morning.

I missed a chance to be on TV, apparently, but that’s ok – they got him.  Going by the stores and the restaurant on my way to the barn this morning, I saw that the broken windows had boards on them, and maybe later today, after work, I’ll go down there and tell them I called the police for them or something.

Back to work now though; there are mid-day runs to make.  My 25 bus is in the shop, so I have #96 today, a mcuh newer bus.  Yay!  A quick edit and off I go.

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