KNOXVILLE — Lester Hux, 66, read his last meter for KUB on Friday, the same one behind the same house on Kingston Pike that he has read every month since 1983, and said he would still like to meet the man who lives there.
Hux has never seen anyone at the house. It sits back from the road. The meter is on the side by the hydrangeas, and the gate latches with a loop of baling wire that he puts back the way he found it. The account is paid by mail and was paid by mail before he started on the route.
The first reading in his notebook is 01842. Friday’s was 01847.
“I left him a note,” Hux said. “Told him I wouldn’t be coming around anymore, and if he sees me in the Kroger to holler, because I wouldn’t know him. Every December I put a KUB calendar through the mail slot. The big ones got hard to push in, so after a few years I went to the small one.”
Janice Rector, his route supervisor, said it is the only meter on her route that she does not check the number on. “Lester broke his ankle in ’96 and I drove him over there myself. He said he could do it if I’d carry his crutches around back, and I said we could just estimate it, and he already had his shoe on.”
At Friday’s retirement lunch, coworkers gave Hux a fishing rod and a framed photograph of the house, and he asked for a second print to send to the customer.