PAPER ROUTE
In 1970 I had a paper route, daily headlines were about the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Apollo 13 mission, the Chicago Seven and many other stories like The Beatles officially broke-up after Paul McCartney announced that he was leaving the band. It seemed like there was always “big” stories splashed on the front page of the Clinton Herald as I delivered them.
My route was a dream route. It was only about three blocks long and included most of the businesses on Fifth Avenue South. Fifth Avenue South was the heart of the downtown retail businesses in the city of Clinton Iowa. There were also businesses just off “The Avenue” on First, Second and Third Streets. In those days Downtown Clinton was thriving as a hotbed of commerce, and the center of connectivity for the whole community. There were stores like Woolworth’s, Grants, Jupiter, Klines, Van Allen’s, Bond’s Walgreens, JC Penney, Sears, Montgomery Wards and so many others. There were eating places like Allen’s Tea Room, Reynold’s, Marcucci’s, 116 Grill, and lunch counters at Woolworth’s and Grants department stores.
My route was an “office” route, which meant I picked up my papers at The Clinton Herald building. The Herald was on Sixth Avenue South and was less than a block away from where I started delivering papers.
I would enter through the rear door and exit out the front door. The area in the back was usually called the mailroom by the guys who worked there. That’s where the papers would get bundled and loaded into trucks to be delivered throughout town to the waiting “paperboys”. Some papers were rolled and put into containers so they could be mailed to out-of-town people.
The guys would grab a bunch of papers as they came down the conveyer belt and hand them to me. I don’t know how they did it, but they were very accurate with their count. I got just enough papers to do my route each time.
Sometimes there were fliers or brochures inserted into the papers before creating bundles. I always knew when there was a bunch of high school kids on the line stuffing the papers, they were going to be heavier.
I would go out the front door, cross Sixth Avenue South and cut through an empty lot where a building had burnt down. These days that lot is a drive-through for Clinton National Bank. I would stop in the alley behind Shull’s Men’s Wear, open the back door, toss a paper on the floor and yell “PAPER”, before letting the door close. Then I would walk up the alley to South Third Street and drop off a paper at a lawyer’s office and Baskins and Robbins on my way to Fifth Avenue.
I remember on May 5th, 1970, when I came out the front door of the Herald, there was a big group of teenagers and young people sitting in the middle of the street. The street had been blocked off with barricades at both ends. I recognized several of those people as guys who lived in my neighborhood. They were sitting in a large circle singing songs and making speeches in support of student protesters from Ohio.
The paper I had in my paper bag that day, had a front-page story about the Kent State University shootings. The shootings happened the day before in Kent Ohio.
There had been a rally protesting the expansion of the Vietnam War into neutral Cambodia. Four students were killed and nine were wounded during a peace rally, when the Ohio National Guard fired approximately 67 rounds in about 13 seconds, into a crowd of protesters. These fatal shootings triggered immediate outrage from students across the country. More than 4 million students took part in organized walkouts at hundreds of colleges, universities, and high schools from coast to coast.
That incident was immortalized in the protest song “Ohio”. The song was written by Neil Young after seeing photos of incident in Life magazine. It was recorded live by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, rush-released and heard on the radio just a few weeks after the shootings. It was one of many records that I bought with my paper route money.
Most of my papers went to retail businesses. There were also several apartments on the upper floors of buildings and a few lawyer’s offices.
When I would deliver to the JC Penny’s store, I had to take the paper up to the break room. There were always a few guys and gals on break drinking coffee. One time one of the guys asked me where I got my hat. Then another guy laughed and said he hadn’t seen one of those in years. I was wearing a leather Aviator Pilot Cap. I told them I got it at the Army Surplus Store. I used to go to that store, on South Fourth Street, to look at all the neat things they had. The guy in the store told me it was an official World War Two bombers hat. I just thought it was cool. The guys at Penny’s thought it was cool too.
From Penny’s I went through an adjoining door into the Wilson Building, where I took the elevator up to the top floor. The old fellow that ran the elevator called it the penthouse. There was an attorney up there that had a very fancy office, that office used up the whole top floor. When you stepped out of the elevator you would sink up to your ankles in a white shag carpet.
The secretary would smile as she sat behind the big executive desk. She was always dressed to the nines, and she smelled so good. There was a delicate looking French Phone on her desk. It had a gold base with a gold handset and an ivory receiver and transmitter. She always held the handset with a tissue, so she didn’t get fingerprints on it. I would lay the paper on top of a stack of newspapers off the side of her desk. They had the Des Moines Register, the Davenport Times-Democrat, the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. I don’t know why they had all those papers, but they had daily, and Sunday papers mixed in the stack.
There was no Clinton Herald on Sunday. However, if you wanted a newspaper on Sunday, you could get all the above-mentioned papers from Andy Holley and his mother, who was a friend of my grandma. They delivered door to door and on Sundays they had a paper stand in front of the US Post Office, on the corner of South Third Street and Fifth Avenue.
They were super nice people. Andy was a real character. He had a cognitive disability, but he was nobody’s fool. He knew when someone was trying to take advantage of him, and he made sure that they knew he knew it.
Everybody liked Andy and his mom. I learned by watching the Holley’s interact with people. They treated everybody with respect, regardless of age, sex, wealth, or race. When I started delivering papers, I used what I had learned from them.
Every time I went into Woolworth’s I would stop and look at the fish, the birds, mice, and turtles. They had the little half-dollar sized turtles in a big oval shaped bowl that had a little plastic palm tree in the middle. It was easy to tell when somebody got a new pet, because they would be carrying a little white box with holes in the side and a wire handle. From the pet shop I would go to the front of the store where I would search through the records, and I always made sure I grabbed a new weekly Top 40 Survey from the powerhouse radio station out of Chicago, WLS.
Sometimes, going in and out of all those stores, restaurants and offices every day, made it hard to have enough money to pay my bill at the end of the week. I found it was almost impossible to not buy something.
One time during the holidays, my little brother Ramon, came with me on my route. It was the best time of the year. Every business would give me a card with money inside. That money was burning a hole in my pocket.
The Andes Candies store gave me a box of Andes Crème De Menthe Thins. Those mints didn’t last too long. We polished off the box before we hit the end of the block.
I delivered to the Clinton Recreation Lanes, which was a bowling alley. So, of course we had to bowl a couple games. There was an adjoining door that went into the One-Sixteen (116) Grill where they had great cheeseburgers. After exerting all that energy bowling, we had to re-stoke the fire with cheeseburgers, fries and a Coke.
Just up the street was The Smoke Shoppe. That place was small, but they had candy bars and comic books among the plethora of items on their shelves. One of each please!
Another block and a half on the same side of the street was Grants Department Store. Grants had not one or two but three pinball machines. You just couldn’t go into Grants without playing a little pinball.
Usually if I didn’t win on one machine, I tried another. You never knew which one was going to be lucky that day.
I didn’t win many games in those days, but I did get better as I got older. Ramon was four years younger than I was and he would gunch too hard and tilt the machine on almost every ball. So, I would play one machine and give Ray a quarter to play another.
We were having a wonderful time when dad walked in and asked what we thought we were doing. He said a couple people had called and complained that their paper wasn’t delivered yet.
I told him we weren’t done delivering yet. He was not happy. He said it was almost seven o’clock and I was usually home no later than five-thirty. He helped me deliver the last few papers and drove us home in the car.
When we got home, I had one dollar and eight cents left. I also had a pocket full of gumballs, a few candy bars, several comic books, a few candy canes, a new 45 RPM record of Black Magic Woman by Santana and one rubber snake.
Both me and Ray had upset stomachs and didn’t want any supper. I still say it was the freezing weather and the snow we sloshed through to deliver the papers. There is no way it was caused by the cheeseburgers, fries, Cokes, and Thin Mints we had consumed.
I don’t know how it happened, but somehow when it was time to pay my bill at the Herald, I was short. Dad came to the rescue again. After that, dad made me give him all the money I collected from my customers. He would hold onto the money until it was time to pay my bill.
He also had me open an account at the credit union. He worked at Clinton Corn Processing Company; they had a credit union called Clinco. Every penny that was left over after paying my bill, went into the credit union account.
The Credit Union office was inside the gates at Clinton Corn. That meant whenever I wanted to withdraw money, I had to ask dad to take me there. Every time, he would ask why I needed the money. Then he would say, no. You have ways to earn money for silly things. The money in your savings account is for your future. In the future there will be things you will need. Important things. That is what your savings is for.
When I got older, I realized what dad meant. After he started teaching me how to use money, I never had a problem paying my bills. Even to this day. It helped me become a better money manager. Every now and then I waste a few bucks playing pinball and eating cheeseburgers and I have bought tons of records over the years. But I found a way to make money from that habit. Yep, I still waste money on things I don’t really need but I sure do want them. The best thing is, I don’t feel guilty at all.