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- SEMO and The Will To (Become A Consultant) – Part 2 (6/14/18)
- SEMO and The Will To Do (You Really Want To See That Legal Notice?) – Part 1 (6/4/18)
- Judge, Jury... Trashman (6/1/18)
- Diary of Cape Girardeau Road Deconstruction (5/11/18)
- Trying To Save A Tree From City “Improvements” (4/30/18)2
Repercussions From Dealing With A Newspaper Thief
As soon as I saw the two men knocking on my door the other evening, I knew they were Feds.
While their suits indicated they might be Jehovah Witnesses, they're usually not going door to door at night. And the sunglasses could have meant I was being visited by the Blues Brothers, but neither looked like Dan Ackroyd. But the little round buttons pinned to their lapels that said "I ♥ Surveillance" tipped me off.
To be honest, I'd been half expecting a visit.
"How can I help you," I asked.
The taller of the two whipped off his sunglasses, tucking them in his jacket pocket and pulled out a little spiral bound notepad from his shirt pocket.
"Are you Brad Hollerbatch?"
"I'm Brad HollerBACH and you are?"
"Who WE are is unimportant. Who we're with IS. We're with the FBICIANSAHomelandSecurity Joint Task Force on Domestic Terrorism and we'd like a few words with you."
"This is about my newspaper, isn't it?"
The two guys in the suits looked puzzled at each other.
"Your newspaper?" the tall one responded.
"Yes. My newspaper. Actually it's papers. I have 3 delivered to the house and someone has been stealing them. I even was out one morning at six-thirty and they were already gone."
The shorter of the two feds consulted his spiral bound notepad.
"So that's why you've been trying to buy a case of Claymore directional anti-personnel mines off the Internet? Because someone is stealing your papers?"
"Well, yeah. The police have refused to do a stakeout over a couple dollars of stolen newspapers, so I figured I had to take matters into my own hands. Granted the Claymores may have been a little extreme, but I was running out of potential solutions. For the record, I also Googled M-80 Firecrackers, how to make an IED out of Mentos and Diet Coke, revenge with a bag of smoking dog poo and I tried to buy some of those cool dye packs that banks use when they're being robbed."
The short one finished scribbling down my confession.
"You do know that several of those are serious crimes? While smoking dog poo would be a misdemeanor, if you made it explosive then it would be a felony. I think an IED out of Mentos and Diet Coke may technically be legal, but if your device accidentally poked the perp's eye out, you could be charged with assault. Do you want to risk going to prison over a stolen paper, Mr. Hollerbach?"
"THREE stolen papers. They always take all three. The Missourian, the Post and the Wall Street Journal. Guy must be an avid reader. And as far as prison goes, it would kind of depend."
"Depend on what?"
"Do the papers deliver there?"
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