well-informed beggers.

I don't know whether to be scared or amused by the people who sell newspapers on the medians of busy intersections. I say people out of a habit of political correctness; the only ones I've ever seen are men. The first couple of times I saw them, I thought they were beggers. Then I noticed that instead of displaying a poorly-spelled plea for help, they displayed the days headlines instead. Maybe they're just well-informed beggers.

The one I see most often is the black guy who works the intersection of the off-ramp from Silas Creek Parkway South and Stratford Road. He keeps a stool and extra papers sitting near the intersection, but he wanders farther back to peddle to the line of stopped cars. He carries a cane, and his right foot bends inward at an unnatural angle that I don't like to look at too closely. I can't hear what he yells, but he holds up his left index finger. I assume he means that newspapers are a dollar, rather than other possible interpretations of the gesture, like "Wake Forest is #1," "Turn to the Lord," or "Look up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane!"

I've never bought a paper from him, or any other of the vendors like him. If I wanted to read the Winston-Salem Journal, I would have bought a subscription when they called my house. But people do buy their papers this way. Seems like every morning I take that off-ramp, someone is holding a buck out the window. It's a good corner to work - my route is the same as a lot of business-types who live in the suburbs. Plus, the light is long, giving him a lot of time to hobble along our right sides, pointing upwards.

I assume these people are hired by the newspaper, rather than them just being independent entrepreneurs who buy a stack of papers to sell for an increased fee. I'm not even sure if they work on commission, because though my guy works his corner pretty hard, others stand still at the front of the intersection, not really giving anyone behind the first few cars a chance to make a purchase. Bad business.

And that makes me like the fella who works the off-ramp. He's got a bum foot, but if he's gonna sell papers, well then he's gonna sell papers. Maybe the newspaper even assigns the corners. Maybe he got such a good corner because he earned it by being so enthusiastic about such a crappy job.

In any case, I will likely never buy a paper from him. But I'm glad he's on my route to work. Even though I'm currently on the bottom of the pecking order and only doing grunt work right now, if he can be happy selling copies of the Winston-Salem Journal on the corner of the off-ramp of Silas Creek Parkway South and Stratford Road, then I can be happy building program installs.