My recent epochal effort to find justice from an L. A. Times newspaper box

One would think that getting a Sunday Los Angeles Times would be a relatively simple process. One would think.

In this day and age one might also think that the Los Angeles Times and other major newspapers would have fancy vending machines that actually took debit cards or in the least swallow dollar bills and deliver change as necessary. But no. They still vend from the old-fashioned paper box that eats quarters and, if one is lucky, opens up so that one can take a newspaper.

One of the traditions of staying in the family beach house in Newport Beach, California, is to walk over to a little coffee shop nearby, buy a large half-regular, half-decaf coffee, and ask for enough quarters to feed the Los Angeles Times paper box on the side of the building with the hopes of getting a newspaper.

Last Sunday it swallowed the quarters but refused to open up. So what can a member of the dying breed of newspaper aficionados do but to dutifully call the phone number on the box? Which I did, only to get (of course) a recording listing a number of options like: "Press or say '1' if you want to talk to Timbuktu. Press or say '2' if your delivery person ran over your dog. Press or say '3' if your paper finally arrived not mangled, not soaking wet, and not through your broken front window. Press or say '4' if you're planning to play golf today. Press or say '5' if that's the number of fingers on your left hand. Press or say '6' if none of these applies to your stinking problem."

So naturally I pressed '6' and got another menu, to wit: "Press or say '1' if you want to talk to Timbuktu. Press or say '2' if your delivery person ran over your dog…," etc. At this point I pressed '7', '8', '9' and '0' in a rapid, highly calculated fashion and got — lo and behold — a real person! On the other side of the world! Though not Timbuktu. The Philippines, I think, judging from the accent. In other words, not Bangalorish or Mumbai-ish.

From here on it was a contest of who could enunciate the clearest English. The street address got confused with the zip code and the phone number with the amount of money the machine ate. I thought I was going to be clever and tell her twice the amount I actually lost, so I said $3 instead of $1.50. Meanwhile, my cell phone minutes were adding up.

Of course, when the conversation was over and I being a natural-born sucker, I went back into the coffee shop, begged for another six quarters, plugged the machine and got stiffed again. So, I thought, the Los Angeles Times Company and I are even.

Except for the fact that the very next day I was at the same newspaper box, quarters in hand, relating this story to a gentleman who was attempting his luck at retrieving a paper from the box. His coins dropped, he lifted the lid and said, "Here, you deserve a free one today." I was not going to turn him down.

I'm not sure I'll ever get my money back, but at least I can be comforted by the fact that no doubt some poor slob in Timbuktu will go to his local post office and find a check in his name for $3 from the Los Angeles Times. Whereupon he'll be able to celebrate and eat for three days.

— LP