The Paper Trail

It begins at printing presses across the country and, no doubt, in some foreign countries. It travels courtesy of train and plane and semi truck and finally the mail carrier's car to end in the mailbox at the front of our ranch. It is the rising tide of holiday catalogs.
Once a year I write something exactly like this and, every year, the paper harvest I'm allowed to make grows larger and larger; farmers should have luck this good with their crops and livestock.
There were enough in today's pile to crush a small puppy if dropped. My wife and I went through them and saved two --- the rest go to be recycled.
On a few of them there was a large red sticker warning that this would be my last catalog, that my name was being dropped from the companies mailing list because I wasn't buying anything and catalog distribution costs were rising.
Ah, if I were but so lucky. As I recall, they gave me the same warning last year.