Sympathy can be bleached out.(There is no spam like an old spam) I cannot deliver a handbill for a sale on Saturday to all the houses in the county in the two days left after the printers delivery service is unwilling to undertake the task. The snowstorm blowing up into a blizzard on Thursday night as the task is presented makes hand delivery extremely risky and improbable. With the business owners son I set out to estimate the level of failure. I had walked the streets in blizzards before. Three foot drifts only slow things down and twenty below makes an Operation Deep Freeze mask and motorcycle boots mandatory. That was for only about 1/3 of the area of the town we live in. this was now for all the other little towns in the county up to fifteen or twenty miles away. The owners son was able to get his mothers 1955 Buick to handle the trips to the small towns but most of the work was walking to the doors to put the flimsy paper in where it would not get blown away or lost in the ever falling snow. We set off for the first town on the lake to the East and the snow there was even deeper and more enveloping as it fell. We had no address list to just mail the ads and the two cent cost of the stamp alone would have far exceeded the one half cent we were being paid. They would not have been delivered in time with only two days even if the addressing task could be completed instantly. The heater of the Buick was welcome as we returned to pick up another stack of paper and set out on another street. Finally near midnight that one town was done. Not wishing to be caught opening and closing doors after midnight we went home. Even the idea of going up to homes after nine oclock was daunting and we tried to pick houses where heavy boots on the porch and the slamming of the screen or storm door would go unnoticed. It was good it wasnt a city. The owner of the store was adamant. The bills must be delivered or the sale would be a bust. The next day we began right after school in blowing snow. First we had to go to the little town where the sister store to the owners was and get it prepared. It was only five miles to the North so that went quickly and we began in earnest in our own town. There were still four more big towns in the county and all the farms and crossroads. The roads and streets had been plowed here and the huge snow banks made getting from the road a major fight. Once over the snow banks we dropped into about three feet of loose powder. Slogging through that to the houses was an experience I was familiar with. We were tired as we rolled up to the post office. Our minds were dust as we tried to think of where to go next where a block of houses would allow us to get rid of another stack of handbills. Finally we gave up and took a handful each and stuffed them into a snow bank in front of the post office to be discovered blowing up the street in the spring as dirty snow melted for the last time. The box still held a lot of paper in the trunk. Once again night had closed off our access to the doors. Tomorrow was the sale. We went to show the owner what was wasted. He wasnt pleased but relented. He paid us for the work we had done. He had to estimate how many bills were left as the only count was on the total. He was a very conservative man. We had compensated a bit with the bills in the snow bank.