chuckography: Orange is the new Yellow....

Saturday, May 14, 2016

Orange is the new Yellow....

We are coming into the vacation and travel season. Try not to have your vacant home become a "target of opportunity" to a burglar.

My newspaper here in Charleston not only will "hold" my papers while I am on vacation, it offers to provide them to schools as part of the national "Newspapers in Education," program, NIE.

(Locally, it appears to be called MIE, Media in Education. Seems more in tune with the times.)

But, I want to get a stack of bundled papers delivered after my return. Old news, for sure, but this is a way I keep up with my favorite comics.

Same with the rubber band-bound pile of junk mail my postman brings the afternoon after I am back home.

Well aware of not signaling my departure for vacation, I do not blog about such trips until I am safely home and reading my mail and going through a high stack of newspapers.

Of main concern, of course, is NOT to have papers strewn in the yard, on the steps and piled on my porch while I am away.

My travel checklist includes arranging that such telltale signs of an empty house are not present.

I returned from 18 days overseas last year - at night - and two thick bags o' papers were indeed on my front porch the next morning. As I hefted them up, I saw there was a bright orange plastic bag hanging on my front gate, next to the empty mailbox.

I shuffled down the steps and saw hanging there was a thick copy of the new Yellow Pages phone directory.

I can assume only the worst, that it was hung there the very day I was flying to Europe and acted as a homing beacon to every potential home burglar in the tri-county area.

Good news: there were no signs of attempted break-ins.

Frankly, I didn't know YP books were still being printed now that the internet, "Angie's List" and other info sources are right at hand and more up-to-date than any printed item.