Vincent Safuto's Two Cents

About the only people who feel any sort of joy when others lose their jobs are the denizens of Wall Street, where the watch-phrase is “the more (on the streets), the merrier (for us).”

Layoffs, cutbacks, downsizing, rightsizing, outsourcing and just plain getting canned seem to make the stock market leap for joy as people are ejected from gainful employment, a steady paycheck and health benefits for the common “good.”

A few years ago, when the big Wall Street firms were laying people off, I wondered if any of them thought of the irony that those who once cheered the misfortunes of others now had the same misfortunes visited upon themselves.

I thought I was destined to join the ranks of the once-productive recently, when the big company announced cutbacks on the way. Revenues were down, profits were down and all those folks who had already lost their jobs all over America were not spending like they used to, and neither were the people who still had jobs.

But I lucked out. I live in an area that’s growing like mad, our newspaper is growing circulation and no one was going bye-bye at our operations. For that, I am grateful.

But if the worst did happen, there are careers that are burgeoning even in these “ship the paperwork to India” or “make it in China” days of disposable Americans.

I came upon this thought after reading that yet another school student has been arrested and probably will be expelled with a police rap sheet to follow them for the rest of their lives for the awesome and horrific crime of bringing a knife to school.

Most of the “knives” are not the switchblades of “West Side Story” or “Blackboard Jungle,” but knives of the plastic variety for applying cream cheese or butter to bagels, of the food-cutting variety or of the novelty variety.

One unfortunate young fellow is facing the permanent ruination of his entire life because he had a knife in his car, which he said was used for stripping wires of insulation for the installation of a car stereo.

I know he’s probably not making that up, because when I was in the Marines and working on aircraft, we were all issued knives called “TL-9”s for such work, and used them to not only strip insulation from wires but also used the end of one of the blades as a kind of substitute screwdriver for removing panels insides the planes.

The poor kids are victims of school security run wild, but their loss is the gain of those us in the adult world in need of steady employment.

For in the post-Columbine, post-9/11 world, “security” is a big issue. Indeed, I have often complained about what I’ve called “security porn,” not “The Ladies of Wackenhut” but the almost breathless recitations of security procedures for events like the Super Bowl, the Olympics and Miss Susan’s kindergarten class. I can understand the need for “tight” security at the airport, though I can’t see how taking my shoes off is making us any safer, but some places – schools, especially – have really gone off their rocker when it comes to security.

The worst part of all this is that it makes education into an ordeal, in which one stupid comment or one accidental bringing of something to class can turn a child’s world into a living hell. Back in the day (late 60s, early 70s) when I was in elementary and high school, fights were accepted as a way to settle disputes, and adults got involved only when too much blood was spilled. Getting into trouble got you reprimanded, and maybe a note sent home to your parents, but the police seldom visited the school unless something really serious happened.

“Oh,” gush the defenders of good order, “but that was then. Today, kids are a lot worse. Look at Columbine, look at the shootings. Without tight security, kids will be out of control even more.”

Really?

We had some wild ones then, and I remember all the gripes and complaints of people in various levels of authority about how we were the worst generation to ever breathe air. And most of us ended up OK.

So the career of choice is school security. School boards are eager to throw money at companies that promise to do a security “audit” of the schools and then spend millions on all sorts of gadgets and gizmos to provide “security.” We don’t need no stinkin’ constitutional rights, when our most pwecious childwen are at stake.

Just before I left my last newspaper, a daily on the east coast of Florida that was busy merging with two other dailies (which was why I left), we did a story on one of those security audits. The person doing it had some conflicts of interest that the school board chose to ignore, like owning security companies and having interests in companies selling security gear, but they didn’t care. In a school bureaucracy, no one will ever punish you for spending money on “security.”

I suppose the next words are a waste of disk space, but needless to say he found that the county’s schools were literally sieves, with students in danger of death or worse, unless immediate measures were taken. All of them were free – for about six months – and then the district could have the comfort of knowing they had done everything to protect the children, and get rid of the spare cash that was cluttering up the closets at district headquarters.

I don’t know what the district did, as I left soon after.

The whole purpose of all this security talk is to get the students used to the new realities in America. That generation will grow up comfortable with the knowledge that they are under surveillance all the time, and that it’s for their own safety. When you know that every gesture you make and every word you say is being recorded and listened to, you learn to watch what you do or say. I’m sure that someday, a means will be found to listen in on the unspoken thoughts of people. When that time comes, I wonder how secure we’ll feel.

Vincent F. Safuto works for a newspaper (still!) in Florida, and occasionally appears on his brother Robert’s podcasts.

First off, I have to apologize, as I’ve been busy and have neglected my blog of late. I am now making little audio segments for my brother Robert’s podcasts, and I’ve also been pretty busy at work and with personal matters.

Few things are more frustrating than a seldom-updated Web site – except maybe one that’s full of spelling, grammar and punctuation mistakes – and I’ll try to put in more stuff in the future.

I do want to talk today about development.

Florida is in the midst of a growth boom, as lots of people are moving to the state to take advantage of relatively low prices for homes, relatively low taxes and abundant warm weather. The state is a target for hurricanes, but this season has, except for Hurricane Dennis hitting the Panhandle, been quiet. But the new media keeps telling us not to get complacent. I tend to agree, because the hurricanes that hit the east coast of Florida, Frances and Jeanne, were September storms. We’re not out of the woods yet, by a long shot.

It’s always kind of interesting to me that development is such a hot topic in Florida since new arrivals have paid for a lot of the road and infrastructure improvements, and their taxes pay for other government operations that make the state a wonderful place to live. Private business has stepped up, and while folks may howl at the horror of malls seemingly on every street corner, we have lots of choices for everything. I consider that a good thing.

A Miami Herald columnist pointed out several months ago that while all the development in Florida might seem to be a bother, compared to some places, like his hometown in Ohio, it’s a boon. While some states are losing population and shutting down, almost, Florida is a happening place. To me, that’s a good thing.

But lots of people, including new arrivals, worry about the future of the state and want to preserve the lifestyle. Countless residents of metropolises – and I’m not naming names of people or cities here – weep over what they consider to be the loss of the small-town feel they say once existed and is now gone, thanks to the people who have moved in.

Even in areas that were devastated by the hurricanes last year, such as Arcadia, the wealthy and well-off are mainly concerned that things not change too much, and not too much for the better for the poor and those who lost so much, in order to keep that small-town feel.

Well, I think that small towns are overrated, and prefer to live in the city or sprawling suburbs around other people. And I’m not alone.

Some of those who gripe about new development are themselves living in suburban subdivisions, and just upset that others want a piece of the good life, too. There’s also the fear that more housing will lower prices across the board.

As for me, I recently contracted to have a new house built in a nice suburban but centrally located subdivision. I like living where I am now, but I see a chance to have a nicer place, plus I already have some interest in the town house I own now.

Growth and development are discomfiting to some folks, and I understand their concern, but it’s a fact of life. People want to live in Florida, and they have a right to live where they want to.

If growth is so bad, I say, consider the alternative.

Vincent F. Safuto works for a newspaper in Florida, and occasionally turns up on his brother Robert’s podcasts.

The latest “crisis” in the entertainment industry isn’t that Madanna’s gone cuckoo for Kabbalah or that Tom Cruise has turned in to a “Ron-droid” (a derisive term for a true believer in Scientology) but that Americans aren’t going to the movies as much as before.

It’s true that movies make as much money as ever, but that’s only because prices are so inflated for first-run flicks that even if fewer butts are in the seats, the money still rolls in. The trouble is that going to the movies has turned into an ordeal that is unpleasant from start to finish, and most of us, unless we’re masochists, want to avoid unpleasant things.

First off is the battle to get into the theater. Since “octoplexes” have replaced the old one-screen theater almost completely, you have to find out which movie you want to see and at what time, find a place to park and then go up to a bored teenager and speak your order into the microphone. Once you enter, you have to battle past oversize snack bars bearing overpriced food and drink, past videogames and screaming children, try to find a spot in the bathroom so you don’t have a triple red-alert during the film, and then find the theater.

Oh, stay with me. The fun is just beginning.

Then, when you finally sit down, hopefully after checking to see that there isn’t too much popcorn or gum on the floor or the seat, you have to hope that someone taller than you doesn’t sit in front of you.

All settled in? Good, now listen to music and watch the inane slides projected on the screen until it’s showtime.

Well, there’s a catch there, too. The time the newspaper has for the start of the picture finally arrives, the lights go down, and you get that dreaded message: “The following preview is for all audiences. The film advertised is rated PG-13.”

Fight your way through six or seven trailers for films that are most definitely not the next “Citizen Kane” but “a love story” or a remake of a remake of a remake, or a familiar title with a Roman numeral (and, maybe even worse, a colon) in the title, and you’re ready for the ads, and the long lead-in to the feature, and then, finally, the film itself.

The film and the departure from the theater are almost anticlimactic after what I’ve just described, and the idea that you’ve just blown $30 for two to see the movie has to gall you.

So it’s no wonder that many people are buying high-end video and sound equipment, and making their own homes into home theaters. Thanks to DVDs, TiVo and other innovations, one can sit home and watch films – and even pause them; try that in a theater when you have to “go” – without being bombarded with all sorts of junk. True, DVDs have ads – some of them “forced” – but you can at least get up and do something else while the teases play.

If the above isn’t reason enough to give up on the movie experience, try this: Today’s movies are stinking up theaters. As I said before, Hollywood has sequel-itis and remake-itis, and insists on redoing or expanding on the same stories over and over.

At imdb.com, the Internet Movie Database, tops at the box office this week was “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” (remake); “War of the Worlds” (remake); “Batman Begins” (prequel); “Herbie: Fully Loaded” (sequel); and “Bewitched” (remake of TV show).

Opening this week? “Bad News Bears” (remake). Coming soon? “The Dukes of Hazzard” (TV show) and “Deuce Bigelow: European Gigolo” (sequel).

OK, to be fair, there are other movies that aren’t retreads or whatever, but the movies are just not that inspiring anymore.

Vincent F. Safuto works for a newspaper in Florida, and occasionally turns up on his brother Robert’s podcasts.

Aug. 2, 1982.

Ronald Reagan was president, the USS Intrepid museum opened in New York City and the world was a much different place.

And I was going home. Back to Elmhurst, N.Y., and my parents’ home after four years in the Marine Corps.

In October 1978, just before boot camp graduation, when I got my first military identification card, the expiration date seemed like an eternity away. At that time, Aug. 2, 1982, might as well have been Aug. 2, 2002. To a 17-year-old coming to grips with military discipline, even next week seems to be an incredibly distant time in the future.

But the day had finally come. I said goodbye to the crew in VMA-513 Avionics, said goodbye to the squadron’s Harrier jets and walked away from the “Hootowl” hangar at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, Ariz., for the last time.

If I thought there was a ton of paperwork involved in getting into the Marine Corps, there was even more in getting out.

Funny how things stay with you. I still remember the flight home: Yuma to Phoenix to Dallas-Fort Worth to JFK. Unlike my return from Marine boot camp, my first sight of the city wasn’t the World Trade Center.

It was the weirdest feeling in the world. After four years of living life as a military man, I was a civilian again. No more high-and-tight haircuts, no more duty section musters and no more stuffing those E-A-Rs in my ears when I walked on the flight line.

Yuma was a training base for F-4 Phantom and A-4 Skyhawk pilots, though those planes would soon be replaced by the F/A-18, which was still undergoing flight testing.

It was an invigorating sight, sound and smell on the flight line, as the F-4s would taxi for takeoff and run up their engines, black smoke flowing from the tailpipes.

Then the pilot would light the afterburners. In the early morning or late afternoon, you’d see the twin flames trailing a few feet behind the engines as the plane roared past and into the sky. Then, like a light switch being turned off, the afterburners would be shut down.

When their squadrons visited, we’d marvel at the F-14s as they flew over for the midfield break, wings swept back, fly the pattern with the wings slowly coming out, then come in to land with the wings extended.

A wide variety of aircraft would visit Yuma, including even Air Force F-15s. The Airedales would sneer at our little Marine Corps base and gag at our chow hall, while we Marine aviation types would show them how real military types marched and stood tall.

But we loved their sleek fighter planes.

Just before I left the Marines, I was part of a deployment to Naval Air Station Fallon in Nevada, and we rode there and back in a C-141 transport. Flying as a passenger is fun, unless the plane has no windows, I learned.

I’ve sometimes wondered how my life would have been had I stayed in the Marines. I never regretted leaving, though, and see it as an experience I’ll never forget.

Vincent F. Safuto works for a newspaper in Florida, and occasionally turns up on his brother Robert’s podcasts.

I once saw a telegram.

Back in the day, before my time, there was a company called Western Union and its delivery workers all across the country showed up at houses and delivered important messages.

“Telegram for Mr. Jones,” you’d hear on movies and cartoons made through, I guess, the mid-1940s. In the modern era, though, long-distance telephony pretty much wiped out the telegram. Western Union tried “Candygrams” and even a joint venture with the U.S. Postal Service called “Mailgram,” but it was no use.

So it was something when my friend John, who lived across the street from the house in Queens where I grew up from age 6 or so, showed me the telegram his mother received one night. It must have been in the early 1970s, and it was to inform her that her father in England had died.

Even then, the idea of sending or receiving a telegram was an anachronism. It was simply faster and easier to pick up the phone and dial (or, later, punch buttons) to tell someone important family news.

The reality is that communication technology is evolving and changing. Telegrams, once seen as evidence of an advanced technological society, today have no use, though if you go to the Web site at www.westernunion.com and click on “telegram,” you can send one. Still, why would you? Some might say more’s the pity, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles.

Some forms of communication still have a lot of life left in them, despite earlier predictions of doom. Back in the early 1980s, when I went for my job orientation at the Postal Service, the legendary then-Postmaster General William F. Bolger appeared in a film and informed us that mail volume was predicted to fall, and fall dramatically, and that the Postal Service would soon have to cut tens of thousands of jobs. Just the news you want to hear at orientation for a job.

New technology has allegedly been the death knell of the post office for almost a century, and despite that it’s still around and doing the job pretty well. Electronic mail was supposed to be the final nail in the coffin, as private companies stole the overnight business and package business, and electronic greeting cards sent by e-mail would finish the job by eliminated another source of revenue. E-mail would also make “bulk business mail,” known to all as “junk mail,” obsolete.

True, mail volume has dropped, according to one friend who still works at the Postal Service, but it hasn’t disappeared. Indeed, as e-mail inboxes became flooded with spam advertising mortgages, prescription drugs and other things no one wanted, junk mail suddenly got a new life. What was once the disadvantage of junk mail – its high cost relative to e-mail – became an advantage because messages now had to be targeted to people most likely to respond.

The Postal Service’s past attempts as being a forward-looking communications technology company were not successful. In 1982, according to the Web site about.com, E-COM was started. It stood for Electronic Computer-Originated Mail, and it offered an electronic message service with hard copy delivery.

I remember seeing the clear plastic bags with a bundle of two or three letters coming through the mailstream. It was obviously not popular, though (I could see that from the paucity of pieces that moved into the system), and the service was terminated in 1985.

In fact, the Postal Service even tried to make e-mail illegal, but to no avail. You can’t fight the technology. Today, e-mail is ubiquitous but I still check my postal mailbox every day.

Many people carry cell phones, and some have even gone completely wireless, but a lot of folks still have their old landline phones, and have no plans to abandon them. I sure don’t. The two technologies exist side by side, and probably will for a long time to come.

The truth is that technologies old and new co-exist in our world. Maybe not always well, but they do nonetheless.

Vincent F. Safuto works for a newspaper in Florida, and occasionally turns up on his brother Robert’s podcasts.

I stopped off at a supermarket recently on my way to work to pick up some lunch for later in the day at my job.

Close to my newspaper’s current offices are two of the three basic food groups, McDonald’s and Taco Bell, but I like some variety in my eating, so occasionally I pick up a sandwich and stow it in the refrigerator in the cafeteria at work.

The store was busy, but you had to be deaf to not hear the cell phone conversation that was going on. A man in his 30s, with a child in tow, was pushing a shopping cart and walking through the store while talking on what seemed to be a business-related call.

The timbre of his voice was such that his words were carrying through about a quarter of the store, and people were stopping and staring as he obliviously walked up and down the aisles and talked about the work he was going to do.

The biggest complaint people make about cell phones is when someone is holding a conversation and they can hear it. I can’t understand why such phone users insist on such public phone conversations. I mean, they get all hopped up if the FBI is listening in, but it seems that it’s OK if it’s just strangers at the supermarket or mall.

Like many other people, I have a cell phone. When I use it I try to avoid having conversations in public places, preferring to either step outside or away from others, and keeping the call short.

I think that’s just common courtesy, and it seems that even the cell phone-using public agrees. Who wants all these strangers around you to know your business?

Despite the assertions of some, people conducting cell phone conversations is not a sign of the impending apocalypse, or the collapse of society, but I recently was struck by a brainstorm as to how to solve the problem.

When I was in electronics training in the Marines, I learned about “sidetone.” On radios and land-line telephones, a portion of the outgoing audio is tapped and run into the earpiece or headphones of the person speaking. When you can hear your own voice, you’re less likely to talk too loud so that everyone in a half-mile radius can hear about your adenoids.

Next time you’re on the landline phone, notice that you can hear your own voice as you’re talking. The inability to hear their own voice is why deaf people who can talk often talk too loud. I saw this one time on a TV show, and the person was almost shouting. When you can hear your own voice, you tend to “keep it down.”

More use of sidetone on cell phones might be the key to cutting down the loudness of conversations, and might even lessen the calls for restrictions on cell phones.

Oftentimes, I voluntarily leave my cell phone in the car when I’m going to the movies or some other public event, not just because I don’t want to annoy others but because I don’t want to lose it. Also, I’m so unimportant a person that I doubt anyone will call me anyway.

Maybe someday, in the future, more people will see the cell phone as something that doesn’t have to be carried all the time.

Cell phones are marvelous conveniences, but if they’re not used with respect to others, they can quickly become annoyances.

Vincent F. Safuto works for a newspaper in Florida, and occasionally turns up on his brother Robert’s podcasts.

I dread Thursday mornings.

Not because it’s the end of my midweek “weekend,” a consequence of being low person on the totem pole of the newspaper copy desk, but because Thursday is the day when my neighborhood erupts into a cacophony of sound from 7:30 in the morning until mid-afternoon.

It’s “lawn-care” day at the town house development I live in.

Now I’m all for good lawn care, and admire those who can make grass grow, because I sure as heck can’t, but in this modern day and age of high-speed Internet access, hybrid vehicles and automatic cat-litter boxes, can someone tell me just why we have to have lawn maintenance equipment that can wake not only the living, but the dead as well?

Every Thursday, it’s the same thing: An infernal racket of various tools, each louder than the last, powered by two-cycle gas engines that, when revved for cutting, turn bucolic quiet into an urban nightmare.

The worst is that, for a grand finale of sorts, the crews then fan out with blowers that are loudest of all to blow the clippings back into the grass or, failing that, onto any cars that are around.

It’s also bad for the lawn service people, many of whom walk around wearing hearing protection and sometimes walk into the street, unaware of cars that might be passing by.

Some communities are fighting back with noise ordinances or prohibitions against early morning or evening lawn work, but a better way would be to invent quieter equipment.

If we can hit a comet with a space probe, can’t we invent something to quiet all this lawn equipment?

Vincent F. Safuto works for a newspaper in Florida, and occasionally turns up on his brother Robert’s podcasts.

My brother Robert has redone the blogs, so I will be updating mine with random thoughts and ideas as they come up.

I changed jobs in October 2004, and the newspaper I work at is not running any of my writing (except for brilliant headlines) so the material here will not have been published in any newspaper.

If you have any comments, questions or complaints, drop me a line at vsafuto@comcast.net.

Thanks so much for reading. And now … my first brief commentary.

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush recently vetoed a bill passed by the Legislature called the “road rage” bill. According to the St. Petersburg Times, the bill would have “forc[ed] slow drivers out of the fast lanes of Florida highways” (May 20, 2005).

The issue, the article continued, was whether to write into law a requirement that a driver move over for a faster vehicle coming up from behind.

In Florida, this is a major thing as the highways have gotten more and more crowded. The stereotype is that most of the drivers are grandparents cruising at 55 mph or lower in Grand Marquises, but the reality is that there are lots of diverse people driving lots of different vehicles, and some are in a bigger hurry than others – a much bigger hurry.

Florida’s Highway Patrol is pretty much a joke, with too few officers and too much highway to watch. The posted speed limit is 70 on roads like I-95 and I-75 – lower where the roads pass through or near some cities – but a segment of the population mostly ignores the limits and just drives at whatever speed it wants, unmolested by law enforcement.

I have experienced the terror of getting on a highway, setting the cruise control to 70 mph or whatever the speed limit is, and watching traffic whiz past. You name it, from econoboxes to sedans to SUVs to 18-wheelers, many ignore the posted speed limit, and almost all get away with it.

Indeed, the law, which ostensibly would have made life less frustrating for those who are speeding and thus lowered road rage, was supported by law enforcement as well as the Florida House and Senate.

I, for one, think that what’s needed is to go one step further, and simply create an “autobahn” lane, and I even have a name for it: the “SUV lane.”

Granted, not all SUV drivers are speeders, and a lot of speeders are not in SUVs, but it just seems to be a twist of fate that whenever you’re doing 70, or 75, or 80 in the left lane, there’s someone behind you who wants to go faster and wants you out of his way – NOW!

Along with lights flashing and horns blaring, there’s bird flipping as you search for a gap in traffic so you can move over. Meanwhile, the vehicle behind you is practically in the back seat of your vehicle.

Invariably, though, the most obnoxious vehicles are the SUVs, hence the name. I thought one day when I was dodging speeding Explorers, Blazers and Durangos that SUVs could come with a “tailgating” package, consisting not of the means to have a party before a football game but rather an oversize chrome bumper, lights of various colors and a three-tone horn for those too wrapped up in Mantovani to see or hear the other accoutrements of the package and get out of the way.

In the SUV lane, though, speeding would be required, and people can take their vehicles to the limit of their engines’ capacity – and fuel tank’s capacity, too.

One of my favorite things to do is to hold up three fingers on both hands as the SUVs rocket past me, which symbolizes my car’s gas mileage: 33 on the highway. Let’s see a Hummer beat that.

Vincent F. Safuto works for a newspaper in Florida, and occasionally turns up on his brother Robert’s podcasts.

By Vincent Safuto staff writer

August 28, 2004

Most columnists love to lament the fact that "things" have changed so much from the good old days, but I refuse to wallow in such nostalgia.

On a recent Sunday morning, my clock-radio awakened me with a public service announcement from a local public radio station, informing listeners that they had until Aug. 24 to register at Indian River Community College, and could do so on the Web.

Later that day, I saw the class schedule in the Press Journal, and below the list was the advice to visit the Web site to register.

It brought back memories of my days at Palm Beach Community College in the late 1980s, and the ordeal one endured in registering for classes.

There was no Web back then, and PBCC not only didn't have telephone registration, some of the instructors didn't even have telephones in their offices. If you wanted to register, you had to show up in person, hand the form to someone sitting at a computer terminal and hope there still were openings in the class or classes you wanted.

For those just starting out, few classes were open, as more advanced students got the earlier registration dates. I remember standing in line hours before registration opened for those at the same level I was at, waiting for the doors to the student activities center to open. If the planets were aligned properly, and the class wasn't full, you'd get what you wanted and leave clutching the class schedule, happy to be able to advance in your college career. Savvy students had alternate classes in case their first choices were full.

Another reason for waiting in line was to have a shot at a slot in the English literature classes taught by Watson B. Duncan. He taught in the theater named after him and each of his classes had almost 150 eager students who thought he was the second-greatest figure in English literature, the first being William Shakespeare.

I managed to take both of Duncan's classes, English literature before and after 1660; the great man died the year I graduated from PBCC. I sold back almost all of my college textbooks, but "The Literature of England," the book Duncan required you to buy, is in an honored place on my bookshelf today.

Florida Atlantic University was slightly more advanced, with a telephone registration system that stratified students by the number of credits they had. You'd get a letter in the mail telling you the earliest time you could try to register, and when that time arrived, you did the "touch-tone" shuffle, again hoping the classes you wanted were available.

As with the community colleges, FAU now allows Web registration. I envy those students who now can point, click and sign up for their classes, though paying for them has become — if anything — a lot harder.

Progress isn't always bad, and while you still can register in person the way I did, the new ways seem better to me.

Vincent F. Safuto is a copy editor for the Press Journal. Reach him at ( Vincent.Safuto@scripps.com).


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By Vincent Safuto staff writer

August 14, 2004

With all the tales about con artists and scams going around today, it's a sad commentary that we have to be vigilant, even when good things happen to us.

Back in my days at the Boca Raton News, I remember reading about one fellow who was convinced that he was about to win a contest because all the letters he'd been sent assured him that he was one of the finalists.

I got those letters, too and learned to take them with a grain of salt because I had worked at a postal facility and had seen huge numbers of them arrive, bundled together by carrier route for delivery. You may be a finalist, but you share that privilege with millions of other people.

This poor fellow spent a fortune on magazine subscriptions and even traveled twice to the headquarters to claim his "prize," only to find that he had not won.

After these instances were publicized, some of the companies ended their contests and others had to modify theirs in hopes of preventing future bad publicity.

I joked in my Boca Raton News column one time about having received two notices from two different companies that I was "most definitely on the final, final, final list," eligible to win big money.

The letters said they'd come on Thanksgiving, and I opined that they should stagger their arrivals to avoid a tragic collision in the small cul-de-sac in my neighborhood. (They never showed up, and I had to eat the cookies I had prepared myself.)

My e-mail box today is full of offers promising big checks in the mail, and I don't believe a word of them. Still, one time I got a check in the mail and almost threw it out, so convinced was I that it was a scam of some sort.

It came in what looked like an official U.S. government "penalty" envelope, which threatens dire consequences if you use it to avoid paying postage. Inside was a check. I was skeptical.

It looked like a Social Security administration check, and the amount, less than $15, made me wonder if it was one of those "cash the check and change your phone service" deals. So I kept the check and awaited more information. About a week later, a letter arrived from the Social Security Administration telling me it had sent me a check. If I had any questions, I should call the toll-free number.

The person who responded was helpful and efficient. It was a legitimate check from the government, he said. Back in the 1970s, when my father had been on disability and had gotten checks for my brothers and me, he had been underpaid. The check settled the underpayment.

"Go ahead and cash it," the person advised. I did, of course.

It's a sad state of affairs when you have to check out everything, but nowadays it's the only way to avoid being taken for a ride.

Vincent F. Safuto is a copy editor for the Press Journal. Reach him at ( Vincent.Safuto@scripps.com).


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