Joe Kennedy

Joe Kennedy is routinely named the region's best writer by readers of The Roanoker magazine.

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Back in the day, Lois Huddleston delivered telephone books to Roanoke neighborhoods.

She loaded her car, drove to her area and carried the books from door to door.

At every other home, she obtained a resident's signature. If a person wanted a second book, the fee was 10 cents.

Now, Huddleston, 79, and everybody else has all the phone books they need.

So many that she declares herself frustrated, angry and confused. So are her friends.

Who of you has not arrived home, discovered yet another community directory, Yellow Book or similar volume and thought, "What the %*#@ is going on?"

Is this efficient?

The other day, Huddleston sat in her living room in Southwest Roanoke County and showed me this year's surfeit: three books from Verizon, two from Ogden State Directories and one Yellow Book.

She called one publisher to ask what she should do with her extras.

That publisher gave her another publisher's telephone number.

And the result?

"If I didn't want them," she said, "I was supposed to put them in the recycling bin."

People do that, and Skip Decker, Roanoke's solid-waste manager, is glad they do. He wishes everyone would.

He, too, gets overwhelmed by the stacks that come to his house. Who needs that many phone books?

Wrong question. Publishers ask, "Can we sell enough advertising to make a book pay?"

They buy the information from Verizon, sell ads and put maps and such with it and deliver the books free to residences, where they're as welcome as a box of rattlesnakes.

Tidal wave

The Yellow Book entered the Roanoke market in 2006, said Sherrie Walters, senior manager of public relations, from her office in King of Prussia, Pa.

The company has distributed its books in Virginia for 30 years.

Last year, 123 million were left in your neighborhood alone.

Just kidding. That's the national total.

Walters mentioned the many features that the Yellow Book includes with its advertising and residential and business listings, and said, "I sound like a commercial."

I asked if people ever complained about their wonderful free product, and she said, "It's rare."

We few, proud curmudgeons can call Yellow Book's customer service reps or go on its Web site and request to be removed from their delivery route.

Let's do it -- and call the other publishers, as well.

One really is enough.