Word: rayed
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Twice a week in the warm months, twice a month in the cold, a pilot named Ray Arnold ferries mail and sundries to people who live so far back in the mountains of Idaho that it sometimes seems the sun sets between them and the nearest town. To many of the people along this route, that nearest town is Cascade, where Arnold Aviation is based. There, in a cheerful office off to one side of a hangar, Arnold's wife Carol receives shopping lists from the backwoodsmen on her short-wave radio; then she does all their marketing. These goods...
...Taped to the wall above Carol's desk was a marching line of signed blank checks collected the last time Ray made the rounds. The customers trust the Arnolds, with good reason. The Arnolds are their contact, their cablehead to civilization. So intimate is this bush network, Carol can calculate the state of marital relations in the mountains by the quantity of condom orders, though she chooses to push this intelligence out of mind...
...hangar Ray was loading the plane. Four dozen eggs. A case of Old Milwaukee. A case of Budweiser. A roll of roofing tar paper. Cat Chow. Meow Mix. Grape-Nuts flakes. Bread. A broom. "Some of them out there are brand conscious," Carol said. "Some are quality conscious. Some you just know what to get. One cat at the Allison ranch, for instance, won't eat anything but Purina...
...Ray had a passenger, a young bearded fellow named Hal who was going to be caretaker of a University of Idaho research station where wildlife patterns are studied. "Might as well put in another sleeping bag," Ray said. "If something happens, I sure don't want to sleep in the same bag with...
...adorned with chummy signs: DO YOU WANT TO TALK TO THE ONE IN CHARGE OR THE ONE WHO KNOWS WHAT'S GOING ON? The people of Cascade (pop. 1,000) hang around here as the people in small towns in warmer climes do around certain gas pumps. They waved Ray Arnold off as he taxied away on skis...