I notice,” a Blade reader wrote, “that you recently suggested using a little elbow grease to resolve a problem. I’ve looked and looked, but I can’t find this product. Where can I buy elbow grease?”

It was a presumably earnest inquiry, and it arrived in our office many years ago when I was a young reporter assigned to help produce a regular Blade feature called ZIP Line.

ZIP Line was the place Blade readers could go for help in resolving frustrating problems, especially if the difficulty involved cutting through governmental bureaucracy or corporate red tape. “Help” columns such as ZIP Line were all the rage in those days. One of the Detroit papers had one called Action Line.

ZIP Line was a place to turn when all else failed, and readers turned to us a couple dozen times a day. Someone needed a passport within a week. Somebody else was ignored by a merchant regarding a refund. An elderly widow was stonewalled by the insurance company after her husband passed away.

Recently, while searching for something else, I found an old stash of notes from our ZIP Line days. Why did I keep them? Some questions have no logical answers.

A local merchant complained to ZIP Line about a window cleaner who was working on some second-story windows and fell off his ladder. “On the way down,” the shopkeeper said, “he damaged my neon sign to the tune of $93.50.”

Evidently reimbursement from the poor fellow was not forthcoming. (It reminded me of something my mother once said to me: “If you fall out of that tree and break both your legs, don’t come running to me.”)

I was impressed that government agencies and corporate front offices were so willing to cooperate when ZIP Line called. Better to fix the complaint and appear concerned than risk the nasty public relations mess that would follow if they stiffed a customer and then ignored the newspaper.

Not all the inquiries required going to the mat for readers stymied by bureaucrats. Sometimes they just needed information. Occasionally, although the question was serious, it was comical as well.

“Can I bury my wife in our backyard?” one man wondered. “She says she doesn’t want a cemetery to be her final resting place.” The answer was no. It might work for the dog, but not for the Mrs.

An older gentleman asked for the prices of the cheapest funerals in the Toledo area and added that he sure hoped he wouldn’t have to pay in advance.

Some readers wanted ZIP Line to do their work for them. High school students figured that out pretty quickly and asked us to do their research. We declined. One youngster apparently was willing to do his own work but had a question. “I have a term paper due in two weeks,” he explained. “Will they let you reproduce in the library?”

We were tempted to reply that they will, but you have to be very quiet.

One reader wondered how he could file for bankruptcy if he didn’t have the money to file. I’m not sure how we resolved that one. Maybe we took up a collection in the office.

A woman wanted to know about the expression “crazy as a bedbug.” Are bedbugs crazier than other bugs? she asked. I believe we responded with a simple “yes.”

Another inquiry referenced a story that said the Earth weighs 6.6 sextillion tons. That’s 6.6 followed by 21 zeroes.

“Is that with or without people?” the reader asked. Given humankind’s expanding girth over the years, it was a legitimate question, although the fellow missed the more obvious question: How did they weigh it?

We were overwhelmed by the generosity of one reader who wrote that he had a worn-out, broken television “and I’d like to give it to some needy family.”

Occasionally, a letter to ZIP Line would offer a story idea; “My child broke his leg and while it was in a cast, he was in a wheelchair and ran over our dog and broke the dog’s leg. Now that’s in a cast too. Is this news?”

I don’t remember whether we sent a reporter-photographer team. But we love dogs around here, so it sounds like it would’ve been a good story.

It sometimes was clear we were either being had or somebody’s cheese had slid off the cracker. “Dear ZIP Line,” a reader wrote. “I got a 14-karat gold heart-shaped necklace by sending in Bazooka bubble gum wrappers and I don’t think it’s genuine.”

I suppose we could have called the Bazooka folks and burst the guy’s bubble, but it seemed unnecessary.

Thomas Walton is the retired editor and vice president of The Blade. His column appears every other Monday. His commentary, “Life As We Know It,” can be heard each Monday at 5:44 p.m. on WGTE-FM 91. Contact him at: twalton@theblade.com

First Published August 10, 2015, 4:00 a.m.