Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Walking the Streets of Las Vegas.

Yes, I was a street walker on the streets of Las Vegas for about 4 years. I was a single mother with bills to pay, and walking the streets paid good money. It allowed me to own a home and help my kids with college bills. Walking the streets of Las Vegas was not an easy thing to do. There were the cars always slowing down or stopping to ask you questions, people staring as you walk by, there were always lots of howling and wolf calls from vicious man eating dogs. Of course then there are those boiling hot summers that can get up to 117° and winters easily get down in the teens, plus my mail truck didn’t have air-conditioning and was more like an oven. Can we say “Fried Brains”!  Yes, I was a mail carrier with the USPS. I preferred the old fashioned walking routes over the sit in my truck all day routes. Yet, the walking routes had dangers that truck routes didn’t usually have.


Can we say, DOGS! Little dogs, big dogs, sneaky dogs, bold dogs, fence jumpers, gate openers, and mail chewing dogs! I didn’t have a fear of dogs, until I became a mail carrier. Dogs don’t like it when someone comes up to their domain and touches their house day after day. They just don’t like it. I think dogs think that we are teasing them, “I can touch your place and there ain’t nothing you can do about it”! Day after day we violate their space and their anger grows. They wait, not patiently for their opportunity, their chance to get BACK!


photo from internet

With most walking routes the mail boxes are right by the front door of the house. There is nothing comfortable about walking up to a house to deliver mail while a very large pit-bull repeatedly slams against the large front room window trying to get out. Not a nice feeling, even as I write this years later.

Little dogs are just annoying, unless there are two or three and they gang up on you. It seems that if people have little dogs, they never have just one. Like the guy with 4 Chihuahua’s. He had a small fence around his front yard with a gate near the street. His mail box was next to his front door. I would try and sneak through the gate and get his mail in the box then sneak back out the gate before he would open the door to get his mail. As soon as he opened his door those 4 Chihuahua’s would bolt out after me. One time they had me cornered as I worked my way toward the gate, another time I was closing the gate as one was flying through the air at me, he hit the gate instead.
 


photo from internet

Then there was the dog, that I never saw. He lived inside his owners house. These people didn’t have a mail box. They had a mail slot in their door. These are little openings with a little flap, you open the flap and push the mail into the house. This is a very secure way of getting your mail. Unless of course there is a furry animal on the other side waiting. This dog must just sit there all day staring at this slot in the door, waiting and waiting. As soon as I push the mail into the slot it is violently pulled from my hand by the furry creature that I never see on the other side. Sometimes there was a growling or a vicious shaking sound on the other side of the door.


As the mail is sorted in the morning, many mailmen file a bright yellow card close to where a bad dog lives, so you have time to get ready. I didn’t have my own route, I filled in for those who had days off or were on vacation. I always had dread when I would look over the stacked mail and see lots of yellow cards filed through-out the mail. There is nothing like walking on pens and needles all day. Every leaf that blows by you jump…

photo from internet

Sometimes it is a first offense and you have no warning. I was on a long walking route one day. I had one ear plug in and was listening to my Go-Bible. I had one ear listening to everything else. I was on the sidewalk getting ready to cross the street when I heard nails digging into the concrete and a low long growl. I spun around just in time to see a large Rottweiler charging me at full speed! I swung my mail bag repeatedly at him to keep him away from my legs! At about the same time a lady drove up and honked her horn, this caused the rott to run away. The lady in the car called animal control for me. After she drove away, I had a hard time walking to finish this loop, my legs felt like rubber and my knees were soooo weak.

My last mailman story for today will be about the smart dog owners! One such owner stored dog treats in the mail box. This made the dog happy to see you. Sometimes I would get to do a driving type route. These are routes where you sit in the mail truck and reach out your door to put mail in the boxes. Or, the routes where you would pull up to the curb, put on the emergency brake, curb the wheels, and turn off the engine, take off your seat belt, then hop out and walk three feet over to put the mail in the boxes, then get back in, put on your seat belt, take off the brake, start the engine, don’t run over anyone, then drive about 30 feet and do that again. I HATED those routes. Ug On one of those routes I was getting hungry and I noticed that the regular mailman had left a canister of cookies in his truck. I thought, he wouldn’t miss a couple of little cookies. So I eat a two or three. They were kinda plain, like they didn’t have sugar in them. I didn’t think to much about it, till one day I was turned in my seat getting the mail for the mail boxes across the curb when all of the sudden, a big golden lab laid its head in my lap! My heart did a leap, but this was a big very friendly golden lab. She sat down on the curb with her tail wagging like she was just waiting for something. Then the owner appeared and he told me that the mailman always had doggy cookies for her. Doggy cookies? Then, it all made sense. That is why the cookies tasted yucky, they were doggy cookies! Want a cookie? Hahahahahahaha


To be continued...




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