Great story. The idea of this stylish woman dressed and coiffed to the nines saying something so course makes me laugh so hard.

My mom wasn’t really stylish or poetic, but she was pretty damn funny, often by accident.

One of the all time family stories was when she was first married to my dad, who had a job delivering the L.A. Times to people’s houses by car. In response to the post WWII population boom, people built small guest houses behind existing houses, or duplexes — free standing structures split into two units that share a common wall — to meet the demand.

As a result, new addresses had to be added between the numbers already designated. So the post office broke down these numbers into halves or quarters (e.g., when I was a kid, we lived at 529 1/2 N. Sycamore Avenue).

With this type of apartment configuration, you might have to go up a driveway past the front unit in order to deliver the paper to one of the units further back.

Because of these factors, there was a lot of confusion and the possibility that papers could be delivered to the wrong apartment.

My mom’s job was to call new subscribers on the route to make sure that they were receiving the paper every day by a certain time, and that the paper was being delivered to the correct location. Otherwise, they might cancel.

As she went through her list of new subscribers, she came upon someone who specifically requested that the paper be delivered to the back porch of the property.

My mom dialed the number, identified herself and innocently asked the question “Mr. Jones, are you getting it in the rear every morning?”