Read Online Dinosaur Lake by Kathryn Meyer Griffith - Free Book Online

put out a damn fine product every week, either. According to Zeke, the Journal was the best written little newspaper in the state. No the newspaper’s problems were more insidious than low readership. It was the surrounding towns that were the problem. They were dying. People were packing up and moving away to larger cities searching for those ever elusive better living-wage-with-benefits jobs.
    Ann believed the scourge of the time wasn’t just unemployment, though the government wanted everyone to believe the numbers were down when they weren’t because so many people had basically given up ever finding a job and were no longer being counted, but also the prevalence and across the board acceptance of minimum wage no-benefit type jobs. No jobs and lower paying jobs were killing the middle class–if it wasn’t already dead. It was destroying America. There were many people desperate enough to take those awful jobs, but no one could live on minimum wage. Newspapers were a luxury, not a necessity.
    Ann knew all that. Her daughter worked one of those awful jobs. No medical coverage. No retirement. No time-on-the-job raises. Let a politician try to live on one of those salaries–fat chance–and maybe they’d finally up the minimum wage.
    She sighed inwardly. Government and the decline of the middle class were a few of her soapboxes. She’d done a series of articles on the subject last spring and had learned more about the subject than she’d wanted to.
    Where she was distressed about the job situation, Zeke was worried about medical insurance and would rattle on to anyone who’d listen that the government ought to give everyone access to affordable universal health coverage and prescription drugs. “I know friends who spend most of their retirement check on doctors and medications and have to eat macaroni and cheese the rest of the month. And there are so many people without coverage who need it desperately. Kids included. It’s a shame that in the richest country in the world, so many live in poverty because health care costs so much. Ridiculous.” His soapbox topic.
    Zeke, preoccupied with his story, had returned to his computer. Since his wife Ethel’s death the winter before he’d become more of a workaholic than ever as he fought to hang on to the failing newspaper. He worked harder than most men Ann thought, and he was way past retirement age. “Can’t live on social security anyway,” he’d complain. “Only a mouse could. A skinny mouse.” Another soapbox theme.
    The newspaper and his wife had been Zeke’s life; now it was only the paper. They’d had two children, Sherry and Tony. Sherry died when a child and Tony lived in Los Angeles with his wife and son, Jimmy, and was a senior reporter on the Los Angeles Tribune. Zeke liked to show Tony’s latest articles to Ann for her opinion. Three years ago Tony won a Pulitzer for a story about street gangs. Zeke was proud of his son, though he didn’t see much of him, and missed him terribly. But he’d be the last one to whine to Tony about his being too far away. Zeke believed everyone had to live their own lives. Children weren’t put on the earth to keep their parents company forever.
    How sad it must be, Ann thought, to have a child and grandchild one hardly ever saw. Zeke was a lonely man.
    For a while the two worked in comfortable silence, except for the clicking sounds of Zeke’s keyboard. Ann was formatting the weekly ads and bemoaning the fact one of their best client’s had canceled his weekly half-page. Things were bad enough without that. Ads were their main revenue.
    “Oh, I almost forgot,” Zeke announced a bit later as if it’d just popped into his head. “I got a mighty queer call already this morning, Ann.”
    He ran an age-spotted hand through his white hair, chuckling, and twisted around to look at her through his thick-lensed glasses. “Mighty queer.” His eyes, magnified, were a sharp piercing blue. She noticed his slacks were