Toledo Tales

By Billy Pilgrim, Toledo Tales Rogue Editor

Left: Jessup at home

Myrtle Jessup lost her reason to live last May when her husband of 47 years, Ezra, surrendered in his hard-fought battle with leukemia.

Or so she thought.

For weeks, she moped around her small Toledo apartment, desperately craving the hard-sell of a telemarketer or the shameless proselytizing of Jehovah’s Witnesses on her doorstep.

Thankfully, Jessup’s salvation came in the form of local junk mail and sales flyers, which started to grace her mailbox earlier this summer and now constantly replenish her self worth.

“It’s God’s will that I’m on these mailing lists now,” beamed Jessup, thumbing through a stack of amateurish vouchers from B.K.’s Car Wash on Lagrange. “I saved 72¢ on seedless grapes last week at Kroger. With savings like that, I could bear the death of my only granddaughter — and good riddance. That little hussy hasn’t called since Christmas.”

Left: Great deals as well as being a lifeline

Indeed, Jessup’s favorite part of the day is her slow, disjointed shuffle from her doily-slathered sitting room to check what the postman may have left her.

“Sometimes when I watch the birds outside my bedroom window, I think of Ezra…how he’s left me here, struggling alone,” sputtered Jessup. “But then I think of the mail, and how today could be the day I get a coupon for a free Frosty. So it all balances out.”