[One recent] morning as I settled in for my weekly self-care ritual, coffee with the Mountain Xpress crossword, I flipped to the final page to discover, yet again, that some other local enthusiast had already completed it and returned it to the news rack.
I understand that I have the capacity and ability to check this upon picking up a copy. But simply getting my weekly copy requires effort, remembering to make my stop after Wednesday, and often I’m leaving a store already carrying purchased goods and grab it on the way out.
Therefore, I am making a plea to my local community of crossword lovers. Please for the love of everything holy and sacred, if you begin a crossword in the Mountain Xpress, take it with you, recycle it, tear the page off, make origami. But please never return it neatly folded to the rack. You are literally robbing someone else of the pleasure you clearly enjoy. A veritable booby trap of broken dreams.
— Casey Larkin
Asheville and Everywhere USA
First world problems.
Life’s tough, then you die.
That can’t be real- people still pick up the Mtn X in print form?
Unless you have a wood stove or wrap fish.
Perhaps some of the twenty-something thousand people who pick it up every week and don’t put it back understand that Xpress only exists because they pick it up.
That reminds me of when I would flip open the phonebook at a payphone and the page I needed would invariably be missing.
Roberto- I blame that on all the 70’s mobster movies and private detective shows on TV.
Question- where can you still find a working pay phone?