To Greenville and back — twice.

Not long ago I received a lovely and rather unique card from a local fan (thank you, Carole). It was sent to the paper’s office, and after confirming my mailing address, staff kindly slipped it into a larger envelope and sent it on to me. When I noticed the postmark on the original envelope, I saw the card had taken a shortcut through Greenville, South Carolina, covering about 150 miles to travel two miles. It’s safe to say that the card traveled another 150 miles to Greenville and back after it was mailed to my house from the office, which is opposite the post office.

Think about this, friends. The card, which is now affixed to my refrigerator door with magnets, traveled 300 miles for about a third the price of a cup of Starbuck’s coffee. Where else can you get so much for your travel dollar?

I’m not making fun of the post office. I’m a big fan, as was Ben Franklin, who was the first Postmaster General under the Continental Congress. The post office is even mentioned in the Constitution, which Franklin lived to see — Article I, Section 8, to be precise: “The Congress shall have Power … To establish Post Offices and post Roads…” (although nowhere does it say Congress has the power to unestablish them).

However, the reporter in me (an ancient, recessive gene) was determined to find out why the card had to make a side trip to South Carolina on the way from Point A in Black Mountain to Point B in Black Mountain — twice. So I stopped by the post office on Richardson Boulevard to inquire.

“Mail dropped in any mailbox or the box in the lobby goes to Greenville to be sorted,” I was told, but if you want your local mail to skip the trip, you can hand it to a clerk at the counter and they’ll set it aside and make sure it’s placed in the correct box or the right carrier gets it for delivery the next day.

A single piece of first-class mail with one 49-cent stamp weighs an ounce or less, so I don’t believe the truck that transported the card to Greenville and back — twice — was overly burdened. I have a hunch that the weight of this card didn’t noticeably affect said truck’s gas mileage either, nor slow it down coming up the I-26 grade — twice.

Despite its travels, the card was none the worse for wear when I received it — and I wound up with this chance to thank Carole publicly.

The Gripes of Roth

Unlike many writers, I’ve never really aspired to write the Great American Novel, and in that regard I’ve succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. It’s possible that every great book that might ever be written has already been written, so why bother? Writers who set out to write a literary masterpiece usually wind up writing something nobody ever wants to read, and I didn’t want to risk that.

I did come up with a title once that I thought sounded rather literary — “The Gripes of Roth” — and I was not unaware of how similar it was to the title of John Steinbeck’s Great American Novel, but I didn’t think anyone would notice. I wasn’t sure what it would be about, but I figured that was a minor detail back then and I’d have a lot of time to come up with something.

Unfortunately, every time I tried to come up with something, I came up empty.

All I managed to achieve was the awareness that I’d have a hard time writing 75,000 words about Roth’s gripes, whatever they were, without putting readers to sleep.

Then something miraculous happened — I thought of another potential literary masterpiece, this one to be called “Fear of Frying.”

Once again I didn’t sweat the resemblance to the title of Erica Jong’s Great American Novel — and for this one I even had a plot worked out.

It would be about a short-order cook who had to confront his fear of the griddle every day or lose his livelihood. Easy. And in the end (spoiler alert) he would overcome his fear, and become a vegan, because he never wanted to see another hamburger or egg as long as he lived.

Well, maybe. I was never locked into a storyline.

But once again I was faced with the challenge of writing a full-length novel based on a flimsy idea. And then I had a brainstorm — I would write a trilogy of Great American Novellas, and I was two-thirds of the way there. Okay, so I only had the titles.

But then with two down and one to go I was stuck, and it was about 10 years before the third leg of the trilogy came to me. One day, as I was driving to the store with Emily Brontë on my mind, it hit me: “Withering Heights.”

But by this time I realized I was probably too old to write even one-third of a trilogy of novellas, let alone all three-thirds, and then get it published, which is an agonizing process. But having had a father who’d learned the meaning of “frugal” during the Great Depression, I couldn’t let these three fine titles go to waste, just as I couldn’t let the crusts of my bread go to waste in 1946. Hence this column.

Pop would be so proud. Or maybe he’d deny knowing me.

Bill and I talk cloud

The other day I saw a link in Google News to a New York Times story about enhancing cloud-computing capabilities and said to myself, “Whoa - enough already.”

I keep hearing about this cloud thingie, but all I know from clouds is that they are puffy white things in the sky.

What could a cloud possible have to do with computers?

So I decided to call my friend Bill out in Seattle. He’s a world-class computer geek, so if anyone could tell me, he could. “Hi, Bill,” I said when I had him on the line. “It’s me.”

“Hey, man - how ya doin’?” Bill said.

“I’m good, bud. How’re you? How’s Melinda? How’re the hamsters?” I asked.

“We’re all good. So what’s shakin’?”

“It’s this cloud thing, Bill. I keep hearing about it, and I’m clueless. What’s a cloud?”

“Hey, that’s easy. It’s a puffy white thing up in the sky.”

“Funny,” I said.

“What’s funny? Ever hear David Gates sing ‘Clouds,’ with Bread?”

“Any relation?” I asked.

“Who, Bread?”

“No — David Gates.”

“Oh. No, I don’t think so.”

Somehow we’d gone off on a tangent.

“It’s cloud computing I was calling about,” I said, trying to get the conversation back on track.

“Oh. Well, why didn’t you say so? Cloud computing and cloud storage are the latest big things. See, there are these great big servers in the sky ... ”

“Hold it right there,” I said, cutting him off. “I don’t buy servers in the sky.”

“I didn’t think you would. No, they’re actually in my basement. Well, some of them are anyway.”

“That I believe. Wait — ‘some’?”

“Yeah, some. Google has some in its basement, Apple has some in its basement. There might be some in garages too.”

“What are they for?”

“No one actually knows yet. We just figured it would be another way to separate people from their money.”

“I can’t believe you’re telling me that.”

“Ah, well, you’re not going to tell anyone. And if you did, who’d believe you?”

“You have a point,” I conceded. “OK. Hey, we still on for the barbecue this weekend?”

“Sure. We’re gonna smoke a pig in a poke,” he said, and with that he hung up.

I sighed and went to my computer, not feeling enlightened.

I was just about to type “cloud” into the Google search bar when the phone rang.

It was Bill, and he said, “If you decide to look it up, don’t use Google. Just sayin’.”

I Googled “cloud” anyway, mainly because I didn’t think I could Bing something, and found out everything I wanted to know and more about cloud computing and cloud storage.

What I didn’t find out is what would happen if the cloud became full.

Would it start to rain data?

I also didn’t see word one about those puffy white things in the sky.

Good thing I learned about them back in grade school.