A Run for the Sunday Papers

A Run for the Sunday Papers

One of the blessings of living in rural West Virginia is the difficulty of getting newspaper delivery.  I can get daily delivery of Cumberland Times-News, and the weekly Hampshire Review is delivered by mail, one day late.  If I want to subscribe to the daily Martinsburg Journal, which I have done intermittently, it would have to be by mail, arriving one day late.

But Sunday papers require a run to the store, and you have to hope you make it there before they run out.  The most convenient place if I want only the Washington Post is Slanesville General Store, which is just 8 miles away.  Or I could make the trip to Mountain Top Truck Stop, which is about 11 miles.  The first couple of years after I moved here, I made it a Sunday ritual to do my weekly grocery shopping at the Food Lion, just east of Mountain Top, pick up a donut and coffee there (I know, I know, I can make coffee at home), and the Washington Post.  But they quit carrying the Post, and then the coffee, and then the donuts.  Now, although they reinstated the coffee pot, they still don’t have single donuts or pastries, and still don’t carry the paper, so if I do go shopping there, I still have to make a stop at Mountain Top to get the paper.

More recently, because I also want to pick up the New York Times, I have been making the run to Sheetz in Romney, which is another couple of miles.  And I have to go really, really early, like by 7 a.m., if I want to be sure to get a copy.  They don’t get more than three copies, so they disappear quickly, which makes me puzzle over why they don’t get more.  So my run culminates in a charge of $11.02, for the Post, the NYT, and Journal, and a doughnut.  Preferably a chocolate covered, custard-filled one.  One recent Sunday when I arrived there at 7:15 they were out of the NYT and the custard-filled donut.  Bummer.  I might as well have gone to Slanesville.  Two weeks ago they posted a notice that they were no longer going to carry the daily Post and NYT, that the number of copies taken was not worth the stop.  And this is on Route 50, for Pete’s Sake. 

But this morning I didn’t make the run at all.  Hard to justify sometimes, a gallon at least of gas just to pick up the papers.  And donut.  I could buy a book for that total.  After all, I can read the papers online.  But it’s just not the same as holding the real, honest-to-gosh newspapers in my hands.  Sigh.

We are creatures of nurture, perhaps.  I remember long ago, when I was a child and we lived in Prince George’s County Maryland, about 30 miles from DC.  My dad, a Marine, was stationed at Navy Department in Arlington.  At that time, we got home delivery of Washington Post, and every day on the way home from work Dad stopped and picked up the Times-Herald, the Evening Star, and the Daily News.   This was really, really important to him, so it is not surprising that it should still be really, really important to his daughter.