The winter of 1964 I was in the fifth grade. The older brother of a best friend asked me if I would like to take over his morning paper route and I agreed.
I learned many things during those years. What it was like to be outside in all kinds of weather. To freeze your fingers and toes until they were numb. Or racing from one house to the next in a furious summer storm filled with lightning and thunder.
And I also learned a lot about people. I learned that people gave better tips when I put the paper in the door rather than on the doorstep. And not to look into the window of a car that was bouncing up and down at 5 a.m.
It was on this paper route that I met my first true life curmudgeon. Jim was a kindly curmudgeon for the most part but a curmudgeon, nonetheless. I picked up a lot of my world view from Jim.
I met Jim early one summer morning at dawn. He spoke to me from the open door of his garage and scared me near to death. I could see him sitting under a dim pull chain light. I think back on it and marvel that I wasn’t afraid to approach an adult at such an early age and all alone, but it was a different time.
Jim sat in an old wooden rocker with cushions bottom and back in a small space among the clutter of an old two-car garage set back diagonally from the house. There were two one-piece garage doors, one closed and one open.
He asked me what I was doing in his yard and I told him I had just delivered his morning paper. He thanked me for always getting the paper delivered so early. He appreciated being able to read it before going to work.
Jim was probably one of the first adults who ever shook my hand and introduced himself by his first name. I was a little surprised. I was only nine or ten years old and easily impressed.
I remember asking Jim why he was sitting in his garage and he said it was because he didn’t want to wake his family, a wife and three daughters.
He asked me if I wanted a cup of coffee and motioned toward a work bench along the wall. There was a large chrome coffee pot perking and looked like it would hold at least a half gallon. It was the kind without a spigot that you had to pour and had a red light on it.
I declined, but on another day in the future I would accept my first cup of brewed black coffee with no sugar or cream. Jim didn’t believe in what he called “luxury coffee”. (And on that later date I remember he used his shirt tail to wipe out an old ceramic cup.)
In the weeks and months to come I would drop by to visit with Jim regularly and he always seemed happy to see me. I discovered that many people enjoyed Jim’s company and would stand talking with him.
One time I asked Jim why there were no other chairs in his garage since he seemed to have a lot of visitors and he grinned back and said it was so they couldn’t wear out their welcome. I didn’t know what that meant at the time, but I now find it to be a sound philosophy.
One day I was collecting money for the paper route and I saw Jim sitting in his garage. I stopped by to see if he would pay me.
Jim shook his head and said he didn’t pay the bills. That was his wife’s job and I should ask her to pay.
He noticed the ring of tickets. He reached for it and asked what they were. I showed him there was a perforated ticket for each customer. Each little square had a date on it for the week and I would tear it off and give it to them as their receipt when I got paid.
He asked how much it was, and I told him it was 35¢ a week for Monday through Friday (I didn’t deliver on weekends.)
Then he asked how much I got to keep. I had to pay 30¢ a week to the Journal Star and I got to keep a nickel.
He mentioned the price wasn’t on the receipt stub, so he guessed I could charge whatever I wanted.
I thought that was a bit odd to say since 35¢ was the price I was supposed to charge. A week later I started charging an extra nickel per week.
I doubled my wages thanks to Jim. (Of course, I didn’t tell his wife it went up a nickel, it was only fair.)
My newspaper route covered half of the city of Marquette Heights. Unless you are familiar with the city the following may not be helpful.
I lived at 213 Craig Rd.
The route covered roughly a square mile starting on Lincoln Rd. at the top of the hill and running northeast to Joliet Rd. I think I had only a couple houses past Cahokia Rd.
It was a morning route and the bundle(s) of newsprint were usually delivered every morning by 5 a.m. On weekends there was only the morning edition but for some unknown reason the evening carriers delivered the weekend papers, so I had every weekend off from deliveries.
When I started the route there were just over forty customers and by the time I “retired”, and my brother Alan took over the route, the number had doubled.
I can still remember the exact route I took to deliver those papers some 55 years ago. I also remember the name of every road and an awful lot about most of the customers.
I doubt if those papers are delivered by a nine-year-old today.
Jim’s wife was on the television telling as how she had seen a UFO. There wasn’t much I remember about the incident except that nobody else saw it but her.
I looked for Jim to ask him about it and he wasn’t out in his garage for quite a long while. I suspect because he was embarrassed about the publicity.
When I did finally get to visit with him, I never said a word about it. I hemmed and hawed a bit about where he had been, but his raised eyebrow seemed like he was hoping I wouldn’t mention it, so I didn’t.
The first time I ever heard the rhyme about Jack Sprat, it reminded me of Jim and his wife.
Jim was a skinny bean pole kind of guy and she was quite large.
Since Jim wouldn’t pay me, I had to deal with her. I tried to keep my distance from her because she was a hugger.
I wasn’t old enough to appreciate having my face mashed into her huge boobs and I still wouldn’t have appreciated it once I was older. It just seemed creepy to a young kid.
The Andy Griffith Show was at the height of popularity in the mid-sixties and our version of Andy Taylor was John Judge. (And yes, the name Judge seemed fitting for a cop.)
I don’t think he was a Sheriff but more like the Chief of Police. He was a portly fellow who was usually pretty friendly, and I had known him fairly well because he signed off on a couple Cub Scout merit badges. He had given me the tests at his kitchen table.
I think John Judge was the only full-time cop in the city, but there were some Barney Fifes over the years. Part time or auxiliary or maybe even volunteer guys. Most of them didn’t have brains enough to match up a pair of socks.
Naturally, most of us kids called them #BarneyFife.
One dark early morning as I was delivering my papers Barney Fife drove up to me and said I was in trouble for being out after curfew. We had quite the discussion and he told me he was going to tell my parents. Back then that could be a fate worse than almost anything else.
That afternoon as I was leaving the grade school, John Judge was sitting in his cop car near the ball diamond as he often did, and he yelled at me to come over to him.
He explained that I wasn’t in any trouble with the law and that as long as I was “on the job” I wouldn’t get in curfew trouble again. Then he told me I wasn’t to call the other cops “Barney” no more and that was what almost got me in trouble.
I never had a run-in with the law again over curfew violations or name calling.
This technically isn’t a story about the paper route, but I was sure it happened because of the “Curfew Altercation”.
Within a week later #BarneyFife caught me climbing the maple tree next to the road in front of our house. He jumped out of his car and yelled up at me to get down out of the tree.
When I didn’t climb down, he marched over to my house.
He banged on the door loud enough to wake the dead and when my Mom came to the door, he started in on her. I was too far away to hear what Barney was saying but it wasn’t long before I heard my Dad’s voice. I couldn’t hear what he said either, but I heard the angry tone of his voice as he sent Barney packing.
Then Dad come out and told me to get down out of the tree. And that I wasn’t to give Barney any more lip. Something to the effect, “Don’t give the idiot any cause to make trouble.”
Clearly Dad didn’t think much of Barney either and certainly didn’t see any harm in climbing a tree.
I told Dad why Barney was after me and when he heard me say “Barney” he couldn’t quite hide a smile.
I think to this day if Barney hadn’t banged on that door and been rude to Mom then Dad’s reaction to me might have been entirely more menacing.
I don’t recall any further run-ins with that particular Barney.
There was a family that lived on Algonquin Rd. that had a medium sized dog named Midnight. As you might surmise, he was completely black.
Midnight took his duties as guard dog quite seriously and would bark, snarl, and generally raise mayhem almost every morning. Some days I could sneak by, but he usually heard me and came out to chase me off.
Fortunately, I didn’t deliver a paper to his house and I would cross the road to avoid him. He never actually attacked or bit me, but he was a bother.
One of my school friends suggested I put some ammonia in a squirt gun to spray him. The idea was it would discourage him.
I had a squirt gun (of course) and I asked my Mom if we had any ammonia. She was not happy with my plan.
She told me to buy a small bag of dry dog food and throw him some. Not throw it at him, but close enough to distract him or even to put half a handful on the sidewalk as he approached.
I was amazed at how well this worked. It took a few days, but it wasn’t long before Midnight would happily greet me each day for his morning snack.
I ended up having quite a number of dogs following me around on the route as I started sharing with every dog I met along the way.
I went through a five pound bag of food every couple weeks and it fit nicely in my newspaper bag.
One early morning I heard the sound of a heavy chain dragging on the sidewalk on Berry Rd. I turned around just in time to get knocked off my feet by the biggest dog in town. I barely managed not to conk my head on the concrete, and he was on top and all astraddle looking down at me.
His name was Chief, and he lived just a few houses away. He was some sort of Husky mix, but from up close he looked like a great big wolf.
I had never been that close to him before and I was terrified. I just knew he was going to eat me alive.
He immediately starting licking all over my face and arms as I tried to get out from under him. He had a big grin and was wagging like crazy.
I finally managed to get ahold of his chain and lured him back home with some dog food. I tied his chain to the front porch awning support and left him a double handful of kibble.
He had gobbled it all up by the time I got back to the sidewalk and my last sight of him was him sitting on the porch with that big doggy grin.
I don’t think his owners ever knew who had brought him back home.
I was cutting across the field next to the city buildings on my way home from school and I heard an echoing bark coming from the maintenance shed.
I looked through the grimy window in the side door and saw one of my paper route dogs penned up. The door was unlocked, so I went in and let the dog loose. He had no food or water and looked so pitiful.
Over the next few weeks, I made a habit of checking and I freed several more dogs. There were some that looked aggressive or mean and I didn’t rescue them. I always worried that they ended up dead, but I was afraid to get bitten.
One day I got caught. It was no use to try to run away because it was a little league ball coach who nabbed me, and he knew me by name. He took me to the city building and made me sit on a bench by the door.
A short while later John Judge showed up and sat down on the bench beside me and give me a gruff lecture about he better never, ever catch me doing that again.
I tried to tell him they were my friends and they had no food or water, but he would have none of it.
He told me some of those dogs were being held for their owners to pick them up and the strays had taken time and effort to round up. He didn’t appreciate me letting them loose again and said they could spread rabies or bite people.
I never rescued any more of them after that, but I always worried about how many of them eventually got killed.
I never heard a word from my folks so I figured John Judge hadn’t tattled.
It was the summer of 1968 between seventh and eighth grade. I was riding my bike one balmy summer evening on the way to Cinderella Village to collect from my paper customers and as I turned the corner from Lasalle Blvd. I saw two older guys sitting on top of a picnic table in the park pavilion.
I rode my bike onto the concrete and climbed off. I saw they were passing a joint between them. I was quite surprised when they offered it to me, and I acted nonchalant as I took my very first hit of pot.
I had smoked cigarettes before so I was careful to only take a little sip of the smoke so I wouldn’t choke to death and embarrass myself.
I was told I would get more out of it if I held the smoke longer before blowing it out and to bear down on it a little. The next pass I sipped a little deeper and held it a little longer. Then I was told I should push it into my lungs deeper by keeping my mouth and nose shut but act like I was blowing out candles. I managed to do that too.
By the time they got down to the end I was pretty stoned and felt like I might fall right off the table. I think by this time they realized I was a total newbie and when they got to putting the roach on a clip, they started missing me as they finished it.
I sat there rather dazed and confused while they talked and after a while, they suggested I should probably climb on my bike and head home as it was getting dark.
Needless to say, I was done collecting money for the day and it was an interesting ride home. It was even more interesting when I got home and tried to act straight in front of my family.
It was the first time I had heard our city referred to as “Moscow Heights”.
The previous story reminded me of another event at the MH park.
I was once again headed to Cinderella Village to collect money when I noticed a bunch of people setting up tents. There were also a good many motorcycles.
I was just at the age when I began to notice the opposite sex and there were a number of scantily clad females in attendance as well. So, I naturally stopped to visit.
They were all participants or spectators of the Peoria TT Races and the city had given them permission to camp in our park. They were a rather rough looking crowd, but I found them to be mostly friendly and in the mood to party. They kept it very low key so as not to get kicked out.
It was on this occasion I experienced two more “firsts”.
It was the first time I had ever seen someone “shotgun” a beer. Several guys did this but only one managed not to get beer all over him and nearly choke to death. (I would not personally experience this until some years later.)
And it was the first time I ever smoked hashish. I got a pleasant buzz from a healthy toke on a hash pipe.
I stayed for a bit and then I continued on to go collect my money. By this time, I’d had a bit more experience with cannabis and was able to focus enough not to giggle or stare off into space inappropriately.
Note: The newspaper clipping in the TT Races link is from 1951. I’m guessing my story happened in the late summer of 1968.
I had heard rumors about a Peeping Tom in our city but it was confirmed when John Judge took me aside and asked me if I had ever seen anybody sneaking around houses or looking in bedroom windows when I was delivering the papers.
I got the impression he thought it might be me at first, but I don’t think he thought so after we talked.
He said there were a lot of pissed off people (paraphrase, he probably said “mad people”.) and that I had to make sure I didn’t cut between houses and that I stayed on the sidewalks as much as possible. And that I had to tell him if I ever saw anybody suspicious.
One thing that got my attention was that he said there were some men around town taking turns watching for this creep and they said they were going to shoot him if they saw him looking in any windows.
I mostly doubted that, but then again, I did know a few war vets that might just be ornery enough to do just that.
I don’t know that they ever caught the culprit but after a few weeks it seems he gave it up and the gossip died down.
When I first started the paper route it was because I wanted money. And I had more money than most kids my age, but I didn’t foresee the learning curve of finance.
In the very first week I had to open a checking account. It was a free account and the checks were free, but “Peoria Journal Star” was printed on every check and I couldn’t write a check to anyone else.
My Dad had to help me figure out a lot of the book work and balancing the account. He convinced me to keep a tally book of all the daily accounting. I remember it still. It was narrow enough to fit in a back pocket and had a green cloth cover. I think Dad “borrowed” it from work.
Every morning I counted the newspapers as I bagged them up for delivery and wrote it down. Every Thursday there was an invoice in the paper bundle for the previous week. It totaled the number of papers, the amount credited to me for those who paid by mail, and the total amount I had to pay. Occasionally there was a discrepancy and my tally book was a great help in getting it corrected with the manager. Then, as now, I marveled that the mistakes were never in my favor.
Every Friday I would deliver a check in this amount to the manager who parked in the laundromat parking lot for all the paperboys to show up and “do the books”.
Dad convinced me to deposit a little more than I owed and to keep a buffer so as not to bounce a check. This was deposited every week when Dad’s paycheck was deposited.
This all seems simple and straightforward until you remember I was only in the fifth grade. I quickly got the hang of it, but only because my Dad helped me along for the first month or so.
I know many adults today who can’t balance a checkbook.
There really is no rhyme or reason as to what triggers my memories or which ones I choose to express. And they come to me randomly and will likely be spewed out in the same manner. Here’s an example.
I posted the “Peeping Tom” incident on Facebook. A long-time best friend from that long-ago era commented (on Facebook) that John Judge had “virtually deputized” me in pursuit of the creeper.
I really hadn’t thought about it in that way. It seemed like any other lecture I might receive from any other adult. At the time it was quite routine to be accosted by any adult, anytime, anywhere, about anything that might trigger them; and we were expected to obey. Or at the very least not get caught doing it again.
So, I just thought John Judge was being overprotective in that odd way adults were about kids. I never saw any reason to be concerned with stray dogs or window peepers. It seemed like it was nothing to me at all. Yet I knew I had to take them seriously. Or at least pretend to. Because, to me at the time, adults got worked up about the weirdest things.
It was only later in life I realized that dogs overturning garbage cans and people frightened by creeps in the night were things that were not acceptable in a safe society.
The feeling of “neighborhood” and the welfare of all was something that slowly dawned on me as I grew older.
It seems an odd duality that we were virtually free to roam the world in search of adventure and yet the adults were forever watching out for us in ways we didn’t realize.
And now —— kids are hardly allowed to go out to Trick-or-Treat. People who let their kids play on their own are called “free range” parents.
For all the wonders and benefits of this modern age I think kids today are losing out on some valuable experiences.
And I think that sense of community is not what it once was.
At first the book was just a way of keeping track of how many papers by the day and week. I eventually began to track cancellations, new customers, complaints, and so much more.
Although there was an invoice in the paper bundle every Thursday, I could expect other instructions any day.
Pink slips were customers who canceled and provided the specific last day to deliver. Similarly, a green slip was a new customer, white tickets were provided for pay-in-the-office subscribers and I had to pay attention they got renewed. There were also notes that detailed people who wanted their papers halted for vacation or those who wanted me to hold their papers for delivery when they got back. (I hated those the most.)
I started logging all this information into my tally book for future reference. I also logged the big tippers, the deadbeats, and cheapskates.
There were a couple houses where the people never paid on time and I developed the two week rule. I would warn them at the end of two weeks they had a week to pay me up to date or I quit delivering the paper.
Some of these jerks would call the Journal Star as if they were a new customer and I would get sent an extra paper to deliver to them. I would have to tell my manager to stop them because they owed me money and I made sure never to let the deadbeats off the list until I was paid in full, even for those papers I got charged for and never delivered.
Another entry, although rare, marked if the papers were delivered late. If they were late getting to me it wasn’t my fault. If I overslept, my bike broke, whatever —— that was on me.
I also kept track of the complainers and after a few complaints I would drop them and refuse to re-start them if their complaints weren’t my fault. If they didn’t appreciate my service, they could do without.
I got tired of lectures from my manager about grouches who would complain about their dog eating the paper or something. If a dog was tied to the porch, the paper ended up in the yard. If they demanded I at least put it on the porch, it wasn’t my fault the dog shredded it.
One person insisted I put the paper in a leaky plastic paper box and then would complain when it got soaked in the rain.
Etc.
I don’t know whatever became of the tally book, but I sure wish I had kept it. I bet it would be entertaining today.
My brother Alan has followed these stories and has shared some mementos from his time with the paper route after I retired and he took over.
The invoice shows that for the week ending Jan. 13th, 1973 he was billed for 375 newspapers. Divided by five days per week he had 75 customers. PIO (paid in office subscribers) credit was roughly half of those and he paid right at 35¢ per week per customer. I would guess he was probably collecting 45¢ per week from each customer meaning he was earning the princely sum of $7.50 per week for his labor.
Jim was one of those skinny guys who ate all the time and never gained a pound. It seems whenever I happened upon him out in the garage, he was either eating, getting ready to eat, or had just eaten. Except on the odd occasion when he was actually working on something.
And he was always willing to share. He would offer anything except his tobacco or beer.
One day when I approached, he was leaning forward in his rocker cleaning the seeds out of a green pepper with his old pocketknife. He sliced off a strip and handed it to me. I’m sure I looked completely befuddled but I took a bite when he started eating.
I ate it just to be polite, but I didn’t find it at all tasty.
Another time he offered me a tomato, which I declined. He proceeded to eat it like an apple and then wiped his mouth and chin with a shop towel. I had never seen anyone eat a tomato like that and it looked awful messy.
He was the first person who I had seen eat an apple completely. Core, seeds, and all. He probably ate the stem too if there was one. One time he only had one apple and when he offered to share, he cut it in half across the middle. Most people I know cut them lengthwise. I nibbled around the core while he munched his half down as usual.
The first pear I had ever eaten that wasn’t out of can, I ate with Jim.
It was unusual for me to see someone eat vegetables like turnips or radishes raw. I guess my family was a bit stunted on fruit and vegetable consumption.
I rarely ever had anything to share with Jim except maybe a piece of gum or Life Savers candy.
One time I did put some apples in an onion net bag so I could hang it on my handlebars and took them along, but Jim wasn’t out when I came by, so I hung them on the garage door handle. Neither of us ever spoke of it but I’m sure he got them.
When I first started the route I only had an old backpack to carry the papers in until the first time I met the manager.
He gave me a canvas newspaper bag with the Journal Star logo on the side. Slung over the shoulder and across the body it really helped distribute the weight. There was also a large flap you could pull over the top to keep the papers dry if it was raining.
I was listing to one side from the weight; I bought another bag so I could carry them crossed —— one on each side. I learned to plan the route so I could leave one bag on the ground at the top of a cul-de-sac or other parts of the route where I could circle back. I would just carry the papers I needed until I got back to retrieve the rest. It beat carrying all of them all the time.
The newspaper bag also had room to carry my supply of dog food, snacks, etc. It had also been used to gather things like hedge apples, pop bottles (gathered to collect the deposit money), etc. etc. It was handier than a backpack.
Eventually I got a bicycle with twin rear baskets, but I still put the papers in the newspaper bag inside the baskets to help keep the papers dry and clean from rain or slush off the bike tires.
After a while the ink from the newsprint saturated the inside of the bag and you had to be careful not to put anything important into the bag or it would get stained too.
Dave was an eccentric fellow who worked second shift. I presumed at CAT, but I don’t think I ever really knew for sure.
I usually didn’t collect money early enough to run into Dave and never when school was in session, but I did chance upon him a few times in the summer.
He was always kidding me about stuff, like asking if I had a girlfriend. Would I like a cigar? Would I like a beer?
And one day I said sure, I would like a beer. He promptly invited me into the cool of his air-conditioned kitchen. He had been in the middle of making his lunch, so he made another ham and swiss sandwich, cut the two sandwiches in half and put the plate on the table. He opened two cans of beer and put one in front of me.
My folks had allowed me to sip some of their beer, but I had never had an entire can to myself; this was my first official beer of my own.
I think I ate half a sandwich but I’m not sure I drank the whole beer. I do remember being a bit tipsy afterward but wasn’t staggering or anything.
The last thing Dave did was give me two sticks of cinnamon gum and warned me to chew them before I went into my house. This stumped me until he explained it wouldn’t do for my folks to discover “our little secret” if they smelled beer on my breath.
For a long time after that I thought cinnamon gum would magically cover up the smell of beer and I would be safe.
I had a number of managers over the few years I was a paper carrier. They were all young men and always inexperienced and ineffective on day one.
After a while I learned a basic problem about many managers. They had never done the job, had no clue what it took to get it done, and could NOT care less. As a kid, I found it very frustrating that I knew more than they did and nobody would listen to me, not even the bad manager.
(Later, as an adult, I found this problem was universal and it rarely got better. Again, too few bosses know what they are doing, care about what they are doing, or fail at both.)
Some of them were the absolute worst and never helped at all. Most of them could get the job done after a few weeks experience and only a couple were what I would call “good”.
The best would give you their phone number, so you didn’t have to wait until the Friday meeting to get anything started. I say started, because even after you explained the problem, it would probably be Tuesday of the next week before they could get anything resolved and often even later.
Regardless their effectiveness, if they didn’t show up at all or had some substitute show up, then the problems would go unresolved. I can only remember a few times when the substitute turned out to actually know anything and could get something done.
Those managers that “forgot” to fix the problem or didn’t bother to try would cause another week’s delay, having to tell them again the following Friday because that was the only way you could get ahold of them.
If the problem was about getting a paper stopped it would cost me money every day until they fixed it. Starting a paper was never hard, that could be done with a phone call to the circulation department. Anybody could do that, and it was a problem with dead beat, cheapskate, no-good customers. I would get a paper, be charged each day for the paper and there was no way in Hell I was going to deliver another paper to a dead beat that already owed me for at least three weeks of papers before I shut them off.
I delivered half of the city. Another carrier delivered papers to the rest; we were supposed to stay within our boundaries for new customers.
The other morning carrier started poaching my customers. I told the manager and he sided with me, telling the other carrier the boundaries were set by the Journal Star and he should concentrate harder in his territory rather than steal my customers.
I was pleased with this result.
There were brothers who delivered the evening and weekend papers for the whole city. I found out they too were stealing my customers, so I went back to the manager.
I got shut down. He patiently explained to me the difference between poaching and competition. They were staying within their boundaries and were simply convincing customers to take the evening paper rather than the morning paper. The Journal Star probably preferred this too, because the evening and weekend subscription made more money for them.
It worked out in the end though because the evening carriers didn’t put the paper in the door or the paper box like I did.
They were of the fold ‘em and toss ‘em persuasion. They never got off their bikes and just pitched the folded newspaper somewhere in the vicinity of the front door.
Customers didn’t prefer their newspaper out in the bushes or out on the sidewalk in the weather. As a result, many of the customers they poached soon returned to me.
Some of them told me they liked the Sunday paper, but had no use for the Saturday paper and preferred the morning paper anyway. And in all cases, better service won them over.
Historical Note: On Sept. 4th, 1833 – Barney Flaherty answered an ad in The New York Sun and became the first newsboy/paperboy at the age of ten.
In the early days, everything in the newspaper was printed and assembled by the Peoria Journal Star. The newspapers were ready to be delivered when I received them.
Somebody decided they could make more money by accepting coupons and other pages that were printed separately and “inserted” into the newspapers.
And they decided it would be even more cost effective to have the carriers do the inserting for free.
This single issue was the most aggravating to me of all the indignities the Journal Star put upon us. We had to spend time doing this for free, it made the newspapers more awkward to carry and the supplements were constantly falling out if you weren’t careful.
Many times, these bundles of supplements ended up in the trash can. I usually got away with it but sometimes somebody would call and complain. I would hear from my manager when that happened.
I understood many customers looked forward to their coupons, yet I felt it was entirely unfair that it was my fault if I didn’t provide the free labor to deliver them.
Ultimately this single issue was the last straw. I decided I owed zero loyalty to the Journal Star by this betrayal and it probably has a lot to do with my cynical attitudes about business as usual.
In all my time as a carrier I had only one instance of anyone trying to physically rob me.
At the time I had a blue-green canvass bank bag with a draw string at the top. I used this to carry the loose change. I got very little paper money; most of my payments were in coins.
I had just left a customer’s house when I was accosted by a kid my own age. Kenny demanded I give him my money, or he would beat me up.
I womped him upside the head with the bag of coins and he went down. He wasn’t permanently damaged, just a little red spot on the side of his forehead. I stood ready to administer another blow, but he ran away.
A week later in almost the same spot, Kenny and his older brother Ed were waiting for me. Ed declared he was going to give me a whipping for beating on his little brother.
I asked Ed if he was going to rob me too and he immediately turned to ask Kenny if this was true. Kenny looked guilty and Ed gave him a little bap on the back of the head. (A Gibbs slap if you watch NCIS).
Ed grabbed Kenny by the scruff of the neck and hauled him up the sidewalk lecturing him profanely along the way.
I stood shaking and relieved.
Ed was a big guy and he could have trounced me with no effort at all.
Usually Jim was the only person seated in his garage. If I wanted to sit down, I had to sit on the floor and that was uncomfortable. I usually didn’t do that. Jim’s method of keeping people from hanging around too long worked.
I can only recall two occasions when I saw someone else seated in Jim’s garage.
Once I saw the mailman sitting on an overturned five gallon bucket. He and Jim were drinking beer from cans. Jim shooed me off when I came over. I figured it was because of the beer.
Another time Jim’s neighbor was sitting in a lawn chair talking with him.
On a later occasion I asked Jim why he let those guys sit down on a chair and not me.
Jim said the mailman was working and deserved to sit down and rest for a bit. Besides that, he wouldn’t be around longer than it took to drink a beer and smoke a cigarette.
And he said his neighbor was elderly and he respected his elders.
I told him I was working and thought I ought to get to sit down too. He smiled and said I was too young to get tired and I would get over it. And now run along.
Those were often the final words of the day from Jim.
It seemed I was liable to run across Jim sitting out in his garage at just about any time of the day or night. I suspected that Jim didn’t work.
One hot summer afternoon I found Jim sipping a tall glass of iced tea and my curiosity got the better of me. I asked, since he didn’t seem to have a work schedule, did he even have a job?
Jim rather indignantly told me he indeed had a job. Not that it was any of my business, but he did “shift work”. His brief explanation was enough to convince me he did work for a living, but I wasn’t entirely sure how it worked, and it really sounded pretty crazy to me.
I decided not to question him further on the matter because adults can get rather erratic when questioned by children.
Many years later my brother worked for a chemical plant in Mapleton. I learned he worked a similar schedule which he called a “swing shift”.
His explanations made much more sense to the adult me, but I was sure I couldn’t deal with working different shifts all the time. My brother survived and recently retired after working decades of “shift work”.
Jim lost some of his mystery when I found out he wasn’t an unemployed bum.
One evening I stopped at a house on Cahokia Rd. The woman who answered the door was nearly naked. She was wearing a skimpy lacey outfit that showed way more skin than it covered.
I told her I was collecting newspaper money and when she turned to get the money, I saw most of her butt and she was wearing shiny black high heel shoes. I could hear laughter of a man and another woman somewhere inside the house.
(When I see Victoria’s Secret I think of this woman.)
I’m sure my mouth was agape and my eyes nearly falling out of my head when she returned with the money. I left thinking this was one weird lady.
Some time later I was sitting in the living room while my Mom and Dad were at the kitchen table. Dad was reading the paper and he mentioned to Mom that a “Shady Lady” and two men were arrested on Cahokia Rd.
I didn’t say a word to my folks but I knew it had to be the same house. My young imagination ran wild. Could I be arrested for going to that house?
The next time I talked with Jim I started to tell him about it, but he immediately shushed me. He said he didn’t want to hear any noisy stories.
I asked him what he meant and he said it was just a lot of noise. Mean gossip that served no good and only upset people when they heard it. He told me it would make people think ill of me if I repeated that noise.
I took what he said to heart and never again mentioned it for decades.
And just now, of course, but I’m not telling it to get anybody in trouble.
Only to say different things happen to different people.
Every small town has a share of tragedy. I witnessed a few over the years on the paper route.
One afternoon I was riding my bike on the way home from collecting money. I was heading SW on Lincoln Rd. and saw a kid crash his bicycle. I was just turning onto Grant Rd. and he was about two-thirds of the way to Rodgers Rd.
I don’t know if his front tire fell down into the storm drain or if he just hit the curb wrong, but he took a tumble.
I was just going around the corner, so I only had a brief glimpse and I didn’t think that much about it. Kids fall off bicycles all the time, I know I did.
The next day I found out a boy had died of injuries from a bicycle accident and I knew it had to be the boy I saw.
I felt really bad about not going back to help him and I told my Mom about it. She said there wasn’t anything I could have done for him and I shouldn’t blame myself.
The day after the funeral I went to his house and told his Mom how sorry I was and that I thought I had seen his crash. She also said it wasn’t my fault and thanked me for coming to tell her; we were both in tears by the time I left.
To this day, in my mind’s eye, I can see him sprawling off his bike and I wonder if I was the last person to see him alive.
Yesterday’s chapter on tragedy reminded me of another.
One cold morning in the first winter of delivering papers I was walking the route and noticed a car with the engine running. It was sitting in the driveway next to a house.
I didn’t think much about it other than it was really early in the morning, but people do leave their cars running to warm them up and make the windows easier to scrape.
Later that morning, on my way to school, I saw John Judge’s cop car sitting in front of that house. There was an ambulance there too and the doors to the car I had seen running were wide open. Back then there wasn’t much difference in the look of an ambulance and a hearse except the ambulance had lights on top.
That afternoon, or perhaps the day after, on my way home from school I saw John Judge sitting in his cop car by the school cross walk and I went to ask him what had happened. I told him I saw the car sitting there running and I wondered if it had caught fire or something.
He didn’t say why he was there or what had happened. He asked me what time it had been and if I delivered a paper there and I replied that it was sometime after 4:30 a.m. I didn’t deliver to that house; I was across the street when I saw it.
He also asked me if the lights were on in the house and I really couldn’t remember one way or another. I thought it was an odd question.
Later I was told a man had killed himself by putting a hose from the exhaust pipe to the car window so the fumes would fill up the car.
I didn’t know him and don’t think I had ever met him, but I couldn’t imagine why anyone would kill himself.
Although this is another instance that is not directly connected to the paper route —— John Judge was one of the best cops I’ve ever met.
He treated me fair.
The last time I saw Chief Judge was a couple months before he died from an accidental discharge of his service weapon.
It was 51 years ago this month and I was fourteen years old.
A friend and I were sitting on the curb of Grant Rd. in front of the Presbyterian Church near the intersection of LaSalle Blvd. We were sharing a joint when the Chief rolled up on us and crossed the street to park next to us with his cop car facing oncoming traffic.
I was sure he had seen us passing the joint back and forth, but he didn’t say a word about it as we talked through his driver’s side window. I don’t know if he was “looking the other way” so to speak, or if he really didn’t see what was going on. I think he was being intentionally blind.
I don’t remember what we chatted about, but I’m sure the last words I ever heard from him were, “Stay of out trouble”, as he drove away.
Over the years I encountered some different things in the early morning darkness. And these are just a few examples.
One house would occasionally have an empty pint whiskey bottle in the paper box. Probably about every couple months with no regularity. I would just shove the paper in too.
I once found a big black umbrella stuck in the ground along the walkway to the house, as if somebody planned to come back for it and forgot. An odd thing to encounter in the dark because I could see it but couldn’t figure out what it was until I was right on top of it.
The same goes for a kite. It was tied to the porch support and was flapping gently in the breeze. Scared me at first because I thought it was something alive until I got closer.
You would be surprised how many sets of keys are left stuck in the door lock. They opened the door, went in, and left them hanging. Were I a burglar I could have collected a lot of keys.
Signs on the door were not unusual. “Day Sleeper”, “No Solicitors”, “Beware of Dog”, etc. But one time there was a poster board with “Happy Birthday Pickles” written in marker. I never did find out who Pickles was, or if there were real pickles to be had on your birthday, or ——
There were also a lot of things you might expect to see in a yard but could still be an obstacle in the dark. Bikes, Tricycles, Sleds, Snowmen, Toys, and anything newly installed like a new garden gnome, lawn jockey, etc.
I once walked into a bird feeder hook. The feeder had fallen off the hook and I was so busy looking at the feeder on the ground I nearly castrated myself on the hook. I don’t know if the hook had always been there or if it was a new installation.
These added meaning to the phrase, “Watch where you are going!”
One evening I was out collecting money from my customers and on the way by I noticed Jim in the shadows of his garage.
I naturally went over to visit with him.
He sipped a clear liquid from a glass jar then passed the jar to another man. As soon as Jim saw me, he put the jar down on the workbench and immediately walked toward me.
I was told to move along. There was nothing for a young boy to see. He wouldn’t listen to questions. Just move right along.
I couldn’t imagine why drinking water out of jar was a big deal, but of course, years later I surmised that it was not water. I suspect it was probably some home-brew of some kind, but I will never know for sure.
I mostly remember being quite perplexed and disappointed.
Customers that subscribed by mail were a “good news, bad news” story.
It was good that I didn’t go knocking on their doors to get paid.
It was bad that I rarely got any tips or Christmas gifts from them.
And since we had no regular contact, if they had any complaints, they were liable to call the circulation department rather than call me. I would get a talk from my manager and a ding on my record as a paper carrier.
The Journal Star was always pushing us to encourage customers to pay in the office, but I resisted for the most part. The only area I really wanted to be PIO was Beloit Rd. in Cinderella Village as it was detached from most of the rest of my route. It took longer to get to that part of the route and I hated having to make a couple trips a week to get paid.
Every few months the Journal Star would hand out a small catalog of prizes that would be given for getting more people to subscribe.
The first thing I got was a money changer. It was so much better to be able to instantly produce the proper change instead of rooting around in a canvas bag in the dark looking for nickels or dimes.
I carried some extra change in my pocket, especially nickels, to reload. I only put 3 quarters in it to begin with so I would have room for more.
Another winner was my transistor radio. I sure wish I knew what happened to the little radio. It was ALWAYS dialed to WIRL for the tunes of the day and the weather forecast. The forecast was often way off. I can remember hearing it was going to be a nice day while it was pouring down rain.
The biggest “reward” I ever earned was a weekend trip to Indiana beach and it was not worth it. They crammed us four to a room and everything cost so much I couldn’t afford to do anything once I got there. I couldn’t wait to get home.
I cheated on the subscription drives and there was an unexpected outcome. On more than one occasion I didn’t get enough actual customers to qualify for whatever reward I had my eye set on —— so I cheated. I just filled out fictitious names and addresses on a few “new” customers.
This meant I ended up with that many extra newspapers I had to pay for, but it was easy enough to discontinue those in a couple weeks or so because nobody kept track of that anyway. I would just tell my manager to stop so many papers and lie again about which fictitious customer stopped taking the paper.
In the meantime, I would deliver those papers for free to people and then, after a few days to a week, would check to see it they wanted to continue taking the paper.
I was surprised that this actually worked and some of those people became long time customers.
I started taking at least one extra paper all the time. Sometimes I kept them to read myself or used them to encourage new customers.
I’m sure this will take several episodes to adequately describe. It was the first thing I was responsible for and was uniquely mine. I loved that bike. It opened a whole new world.
Once I survived the winter months of January and February of 1965 on the paper route, Dad decided he would give me his old bike.
It had been stored in Grandpa’s garage for many years. It was rusty and barely rolled. The tires and tubes were no good.
We brought it home in the back of our old Rambler station wagon and set to work on it. Dad bought the parts and put them “on account”. I had to pay him back.
We started with new tires, tubes, and a new chain. The old chain was rusted almost solid. Dad taught me how to change the tires and tubes with two old flat head screwdrivers he was kind enough to loan me. He admonished if I didn’t put them away properly, I would have to buy my own.
Although it still needed work, I could ride it after that but it took a long time to learn how to maneuver it without crashing. I crashed a lot.
It was a behemoth. It had an all steel frame and probably weighed more than I did at nine years old. I don’t know for sure how tall it was, but I couldn’t sit on the seat to pedal. I had to stand up to pedal and I was in danger of gelding myself on the center bar with every stroke of the pedal crank. At first, I could not get on or off without a step to get started. I could only ride on the flat and if I went downhill (I could coast sitting on the seat!) I had to push it back up.
The bike wheel axles made a grinding, growling noise at first. Dad decided we should take the assemblies apart, clean the bearings and races, and pack them with new grease.
We didn’t have a garage or any shelter to work in; we spread a shower curtain on the ground and set the bike upside down on handlebars and seat.
He let me borrow his wrenches. I had one the proper size and an adjustable crescent wrench. Dad sprayed the nuts and axle ends with WD-40 and we let them soak before we could even get them apart.
Once we finally had the wheels off, we gently tapped the axel and bearings out of the wheel, then soaked them all in gasoline so we could clean the chunks of old grease off of them.
Dad admonished me never to do this without him because gasoline was so combustible, and you had to be VERY careful not to create any spark to send you up in flames.
After those were cleaned and allowed to dry for a couple days, Dad showed me how to pack grease into the bearings before we reassembled everything.
We also put new grease zerks in both axel housings. Dad let me borrow his grease gun, but he put the can of grease on account. I’m sure I was the only boy on the block with his own can of grease.
It was amazing how much better that old bike rolled after that and it was so much quieter. I felt like I had a brand new bike.
(Except for the flaky paint, rust, squeaky seat, etc.)
The next step was to do the same with the crank assembly and the steering column. Those were much easier to work on. There wasn’t as much improvement from that maintenance, but the front fork wobbled more smoothly as I learned to avoid trees, parked cars, little children, etc.
The first two additions to the bicycle were a kickstand and lights.
Dad insisted I had to have lights front and back so I could be seen in the early morning dark. We mounted a small generator on the frame just below the fender. It was spring loaded to hold the power generator against the rear tire. There was a red taillight at the rear and a headlamp mounted on the handlebars.
The lights flickered due to the inconsistent speed of the wheel against the generator wheel and gave it a rather spooky quality.
We found an old motorcycle style kickstand in Grandpa’s garage and mounted it to the frame. It was spring loaded to hold it horizontally against the frame when not in use. You had to hold it down with your foot and pull the bike backwards to force the kickstand past center so the bike rested on the three points of the kickstand and the rear tire.
This worked great for me because, at first, I couldn’t get on without a step. I could use the kickstand to hold it up while I climbed on.
I would tip the bike forward and pull the pedal around until the right-side pedal was in just the right place to start pedaling, then climb up on the bike. I could then rock forward off the kickstand and start pedaling.
Later I learned to swing up on the bike in a smooth motion by standing on the left side pedal and throwing my leg over like a western cowboy getting on a horse. You just had to time everything right so you could start pedaling before you fell over.
The most important addition to my trusty steed were baskets that straddled the rear wheel.
I just couldn’t manage to get on the bike and get it rolling while carrying those newspaper bags hanging from my shoulders.
They were also expensive accessories. Once again, my Dad floated me a loan and it took several months to get him repaid, but I thought it was well worth it.
There were three drawbacks, I had to carefully balance the load, I had to be careful not to catch my leg on them when I swung my leg over and they rattled terribly when empty.
Keeping the bike road worthy required maintenance. Oil and grease kept things operating smoothly. Replacing broken parts and repairing innertubes were more time consuming and expensive.
By far the most frequent repair for me was patching or replacing the innertubes. I learned to do it without removing the wheel from the frame.
Less often I had to replace a broken pedal, but it was rather difficult if it broke off even with the crank.
I learned of the existence of left-hand threads the first time I went to buy a new pedal and was asked which pedal broke.
I didn’t realize it made a difference.
I also learned it was wise to get a replacement that had a large slot in the end or, even better, an Allen head socket in the end. That way if the pedal broke off flush and there were no flats left on the stem to remove the broken piece inside the crank —— you could remove it from the other side by using a screwdriver or Allen wrench.
(As long as you remember a left side pedal has a left-hand thread.)
The worst and most expensive repair was instead of breaking the pedal at the stem, the threaded end of the crank broke off and I had to replace the entire crank.
I had to save up my money before I could afford to get a speedometer for the bike. Dad said it was “frivolous” and wouldn’t loan me the money to buy it.
I did learn a valuable lesson in mechanical engineering. You have to match the speedometer to the diameter of the bicycle wheel in order to get an accurate reading.
I can remember racing downhill to achieve the maximum speed possible and managed to reach 40 mph heading downhill on Lincoln Rd. to the Jr. High school. Nearly lost it on the bumps and potholes in the process.
Another frivolous expenditure was a bell. I soon tired of that as it was a rather annoying sound.
I also mounted a compass on the handlebars, but it froze and broke when winter arrived. It didn’t matter, by then I knew my direction no matter where I was in our little town.
I bought my bike parts and accessories from a small shop in Pekin. There were so many things on the shelves and hanging on the wall and I would dream about the things I couldn’t afford.
Dad took me a couple times when we first started rebuilding the bike, but it was hard to get him to do it after that. I would sometimes have to wait weeks to get the things I wanted or needed.
I decided to ride the bus to Pekin, but only did it once. It turned into an all day affair and I had to walk down to Rt. 29 to catch the bus and then back home again.
I took numerous trips to Pekin on the bicycle. I would have to walk from Rt. 98 to Pekin on the railroad tracks because the only other way was to travel on Rt. 29, and it was too busy to ride a bike on.
I kept a spare chain, a pair of pedals, and a tube repair kit and would always go to town to keep them in stock. I once walked all the way when I shredded an innertube and couldn’t ride the bike to town to replace it.
As far as I know, my folks never knew about these solo trips.
Things got much easier after Mom got her driver’s license. She was far more willing to take us to town than Dad was.
Since I was moving faster and usually in the pitch dark; obstacles were a bigger concern riding my bike than if I were walking.
The worst involved snow and ice. Simply bumping up on a curb or crossways down a sloped grassy lawn could turn into a slippery crash in a hurry.
The worst I ever had though, was riding off a hill that had been recently landscaped from a small hill to a 3 foot drop to the next driveway below. That was a scary thrill.
It used to be a sharp little hill between houses but over the weekend they cut the hill back a couple feet and landscaped it with timbers. I didn’t know and I realized too late when I started down the hill.
I hit the ground rolling and didn’t crash but it was a near thing.
I had also learned to put my front wheel up on the door step as I put the paper in the door, but there were times when it didn’t go right and I toppled into the yard getting up there or backing out.
I never hit any cars or people, but I did run over a fat raccoon once. It seemed like he came out of nowhere and before I could get stopped my front wheel bumped right over him. I looked back just in time to see him scurry off between houses and out of sight. I never did know if I had injured him badly or not. I worried about him.
After a few years of faithful service, the old behemoth died of a rusty weld failure. The main horizontal frame member broke off at the weld to the steering column.
Dad took it to Grandpa’s garage saying he would get it repaired. Never happened. It was probably still there years later when the house was sold at the estate sale.
Instead, Dad talked me into buying an English touring bike from the Spiegel catalog. It was lightweight, had skinny tires, hand brakes and a 3 speed hub.
It had a much rougher ride and I never got used to the brakes. The gear shift broke in the first year and I was stuck in second gear. All in all, it was a sorry step down from the heavy duty machine I had relied upon.
The only other bike I ever owned was a 20” stingray that got stolen on Halloween night, 1968. It was a fun bike to ride but was totally unsuitable for hauling newspapers.
One of my fondest “Jim” stories is about a slice of apple pie.
I was out going from house to house collecting money on an early fall afternoon when I noticed Jim’s elderly neighbor turning the corner at Jim’s driveway and heading for the garage. He had a walking cane in one hand a foil covered dish in the other.
I naturally had to check it out. Jim and the old guy were standing at the work bench when I walked up. Jim was cutting into an apple pie with his pocketknife. He nodded at me and smiled, then shook his head as if to say I picked the right time to show up.
Of course, he offered me some pie too. I watched as they each scooped up a slice of pie with the wide part toward their palm and the pointy end near their fingers with the other hand below to catch any gooey drips.
I did my best to do the same. We three slurped it down in messy bites then went over to the garden hose to wash it down with cold water after washing our hands and faces.
Probably the best piece of pie I have eaten in my life.
Every year or two the city would spray tar and dump gravel on about a third of the roads. In the late afternoon when I collected money it was a sticky, gooey, slippery mess and I tried to avoid it.
It was less sticky in the morning when it was cooler, but it was still a good idea to avoid because the gravel would collect in places and made bike riding dangerous.
I never went completely down in that mess, but more than once I ended up having to put a foot down quick to avoid a spill.
And it made a mess of my bicycle.
I can remember once I had walked barefoot, and I ended up with my Mom going after the bottom of my feet with a scrub brush and Tide detergent.
On two separate bitterly cold mornings I was invited in by a nice lady to warm up. Both times she told me to take off my mittens and handed me a steaming cup of hot chocolate. Very sweet, both the chocolate and the lady.
One hot summer afternoon I was told to come in and close the door. The home was air conditioned and many homes of the time were not, including my own. She went to get my money and returned with it and a small green bottle of Coca-Cola. Every drop was ice cold and appreciated.
I was walking barefoot and stepped on a honeybee. She stung me between the toes. The next customer noticed I was hobbling along and asked me what happened. After I told her, she made me sit down on the porch step and tweezed the stinger out for me. She put a blob of baking-soda plaster on it and made me sit still for ten minutes which she timed by her watch as she sat with me. I don’t know that the baking-soda helped, but it was nice to be worried over while she lectured me on the dangers of shoelessness.
I am sure they were all mothers. I have since concluded that all mothers, at some time, temporarily adopt children and smother them with care.
Remember Dave of ham sandwich and beer fame? Dave would often ask me if I wanted a tip and then say something like, “Buy low, sell high” or “Don’t eat yellow snow.” Yuck Yuck, but he was a big tipper too. He would occasionally hand me a dollar bill and say, “Keep the change.” Very boss.
Men usually tipped better and more often, but they would also be more likely to be gruff about it or complain the paper cost too much while they gave me extra. I thought maybe they didn’t want me to think they were getting soft.
Women tipped less but were more likely to take the time to give me the exact change, usually smiled, and were nicer.
Only a few customers tipped regularly and then only an extra nickel or dime. I had one lady who often gave me a half dollar coin and told me to keep the change. I thought the coins were neat.
One woman would regularly make me choose something from her candy dish. I guess that was a gratuity, but it felt more like a visit to the dentist or the bank when I was a little kid.
I can remember the tips were better on cold winter days and most especially the week before Christmas.
The worst tipping customer I can remember never tipped at all but would regularly say they weren’t giving me a tip for some excuse or another. It was always a bullshit excuse like they were ashamed not to tip and projected that on me.
I saw the first naked female breast while delivering papers one morning.
I had just put the paper in the screen door and was turning away when the interior door opened. She was wearing a housecoat and it fell open when she leaned down to pick up the newspaper. I’m sure she had no idea I was standing there. She let out a small shriek and slammed the door shut while I stood there gawking. Neither of us ever mentioned it but we both knew.
In later years, for some unknown reason, I thought of the lyrics to The Streak:
“Don’t look, Ethel!” “But it’s too late,” “She’d already been incensed.”
I was in the sixth or seventh grade and a girl who was four or five years older was standing at the door in her blinding white bra and panties. She reached out and took the paper with a saucy smirk and did a little bump when she closed the door. I’m sure she exposed far less than a modern bikini would but I was a bit scandalized, as she intended.
And finally, I was collecting my money and had been invited into the house. A young girl came walking into the room in her underwear and didn’t an abrupt about-face and fled when she saw me standing there.
Mortified I’m sure. I’m betting Dad got in trouble for that one.
The newspapers were almost always delivered before 4:30 a.m. when I went outside to get them. The bundle would be left between the sidewalk and curb, next to the maple tree in front of my house.
Occasionally they would be a little late and I can remember hearing the truck driving through town as it approached my house in the morning quiet.
A few times they were so late I had to really hurry to get them delivered before school. I didn’t mind if they were late in the summer but my customers probably did.
There were only a very few times the papers arrived too late for me to deliver before school and almost always because of bad road conditions. I really hated having to deliver them after school.
If it was raining, they would usually cover the bundle to keep the papers dry. They used old plastic printing plates to cover them. It was a heavy plastic material just a bit larger that a print page and curved from the press rollers.
The worst driver I ever had would toss the bundles out and sometimes they would break open. I would have to collect the papers strewn all over the yard. That didn’t happen too often before there was a new driver.
Snow was probably one of my worst enemies for delivering newspapers. There were times when it was just too deep to ride the bike. I was usually out before the snowplow and it could be quite challenging.
Even after the snow had been plowed and shoveled it was difficult to turn around at a doorstep with a heavy bike loaded with newspapers.
I tried hauling the papers around on a sled, but it turned out to be too much work trying to keep the paper bag from sliding off the sled. I spent as much time fooling with that as hauling the sled.
A borrowed snow saucer proved to be the better option, but it still was almost more bother than it was worth.
Ultimately, I ended up slogging through the slush and snow on foot. There were a couple times when I got hung up on the drifts and eventually was forced to walk around them.
I was light enough to walk on top of the drifts after they had time to glaze over, but sometimes I fell through. There is nothing more panicking for a 10-year-old than to suddenly sink up to your waist.
Another enemy of being a paper carrier in winter was the bitter cold.
I learned that mittens were warmer than gloves. I also learned that a pair of cotton gloves worn inside a pair of mittens was even warmer. It took some getting used to before I could handle the papers with bulky hands.
If it wasn’t too cold, I would sometimes keep my hands warm by stuffing them between the papers in the newspaper bags.
My favorite winter attire was a ski mask. It was the ultimate in keeping my ears, nose, and cheeks from going numb.
Keeping your hands and feet dry was also so very important. If you broke through the ice on a puddle and got your sneakers wet —— you were in for numb toes for the rest of the route.
I didn’t own a decent pair of winter boots until I was in junior high school. All the winters before then I relied on two pairs of socks and bread wrappers to avoid frostbitten toes.
I would put on a pair of socks, the bread wrappers, and then another pair of socks to hold the wrappers in place; then stuff my feet into my tennis shoes. I would have worn another pair of socks, but if I did I couldn’t get my shoes on.
I don’t remember who told me about the bread wrappers but they certainly saved me a lot of pain and grief.
In a recent email exchange with my friend Jeff (famous on the Blog for his Bicycle Trip and Truck Reports) I mentioned I’d considered a thread of stories regarding my time in #Scouting. He sent the photo below of the shoulder patch for our Troop 193.
Jeff is a part of that story during my time in Boy Scouts and he is one of the very few who attained status as an Eagle Scout. I was also singularly impressed that Jeff usually had a can of pepper whenever it was needed. The epitome of the Scout Motto, Be Prepared.
I was active in all phases beginning with Cub Scouts and moving forward through Webelos, Boy Scouts and Explorer. I hope to chronicle my memories similar to those of my Paper Route Stories.
My memories are sometimes vivid and sometimes vague and occur to me in no particular order as one thing reminds of another. I invite Jeff, my brother Alan, and anyone else who has similar memories to walk along this memory lane with me. I look forward to discussion, additions, corrections or entirely new facets along the way.
About
One early morning I heard the sound of a heavy chain dragging on the sidewalk on Berry Rd. I turned around just in time to get knocked off my feet by the biggest dog in town. I barely managed not to conk my head on the concrete, and he was on top and all astraddle looking down at me.
I rode my bike onto the concrete and climbed off. I saw they were passing a joint between them. I was quite surprised when they offered it to me, and I acted nonchalant as I took my very first hit of pot.
When I first started the paper route it was because I wanted money. And I had more money than most kids my age, but I didn’t foresee the learning curve of finance.
At first the book was just a way of keeping track of how many papers by the day and week. I eventually began to track cancellations, new customers, complaints, and so much more.
One day when I approached, he was leaning forward in his rocker cleaning the seeds out of a green pepper with his old pocketknife. He sliced off a strip and handed it to me. I’m sure I looked completely befuddled but I took a bite when he started eating. 
The first pear I had ever eaten that wasn’t out of can, I ate with Jim.
One time I did put some apples in an onion net bag so I could hang it on my handlebars and took them along, but Jim wasn’t out when I came by, so I hung them on the garage door handle. Neither of us ever spoke of it but I’m sure he got them.
At the time I had a blue-green canvass bank bag with a draw string at the top. I used this to carry the loose change. I got very little paper money; most of my payments were in coins.
Once I saw the mailman sitting on an overturned five gallon bucket. He and Jim were drinking beer from cans. Jim shooed me off when I came over. I figured it was because of the beer.
One evening I stopped at a house on Cahokia Rd. The woman who answered the door was nearly naked. She was wearing a skimpy lacey outfit that showed way more skin than it covered.
Over the years I encountered some different things in the early morning darkness. And these are just a few examples.
I naturally went over to visit with him.
The first thing I got was a money changer. It was so much better to be able to instantly produce the proper change instead of rooting around in a canvas bag in the dark looking for nickels or dimes.
Another winner was my transistor radio. I sure wish I knew what happened to the little radio. It was ALWAYS dialed to WIRL for the tunes of the day and the weather forecast. The forecast was often way off. I can remember hearing it was going to be a nice day while it was pouring down rain.
Dad insisted I had to have lights front and back so I could be seen in the early morning dark. We mounted a small generator on the frame just below the fender. It was spring loaded to hold the power generator against the rear tire. There was a red taillight at the rear and a headlamp mounted on the handlebars.
We found an old motorcycle style kickstand in Grandpa’s garage and mounted it to the frame. It was spring loaded to hold it horizontally against the frame when not in use. You had to hold it down with your foot and pull the bike backwards to force the kickstand past center so the bike rested on the three points of the kickstand and the rear tire.
The most important addition to my trusty steed were baskets that straddled the rear wheel.
The worst and most expensive repair was instead of breaking the pedal at the stem, the threaded end of the crank broke off and I had to replace the entire crank.
I had to save up my money before I could afford to get a speedometer for the bike. Dad said it was “frivolous” and wouldn’t loan me the money to buy it.
Another frivolous expenditure was a bell. I soon tired of that as it was a rather annoying sound.
The worst I ever had though, was riding off a hill that had been recently landscaped from a small hill to a 3 foot drop to the next driveway below. 
I was messaging with my brother Alan and realized I had left out a most important feature of the old bike. The big comfy saddle seat.
Every year or two the city would spray tar and dump gravel on about a third of the roads. In the late afternoon when I collected money it was a sticky, gooey, slippery mess and I tried to avoid it.
On two separate bitterly cold mornings I was invited in by a nice lady to warm up. Both times she told me to take off my mittens and handed me a steaming cup of hot chocolate. Very sweet, both the chocolate and the lady.
One hot summer afternoon I was told to come in and close the door. The home was air conditioned and many homes of the time were not, including my own. She went to get my money and returned with it and a small green bottle of Coca-Cola. Every drop was ice cold and appreciated.
Men usually tipped better and more often, but they would also be more likely to be gruff about it or complain the paper cost too much while they gave me extra. I thought maybe they didn’t want me to think they were getting soft.
Snow was probably one of my worst enemies for delivering newspapers. There were times when it was just too deep to ride the bike. I was usually out before the snowplow and it could be quite challenging. 
