Paperboy Memories

 

August, 2021

I found an Op-ed column in our local Tulsa paper this week to be a fascinating account of the life of a paperboy here in Tulsa in the 1950s and early 60s. My wife suggested  I should draft my recollections of our similar experiences in Memphis, TN over the same timespan.

The Tulsa paperboy delivered the Tulsa Tribune afternoons six days a week. He then had to arise pre-dawn on Sundays to deliver the Sunday paper. He found this a bit onerous.  

Like Tulsa, Memphis had both a morning and an evening paper in the 50s. The evening paper, the Press-Scimitar, lasted until 1983, while the morning Commercial Appeal is still published.

My older brothers and I were Commercial carriers. (At this point my kids and grandkids will be wondering if I ever did anything not previously attempted or accomplished by those aforementioned brothers. They could point to this first job as well as to our school band involvement, playing the French horn. I would contend, though, that these two examples are the exception rather than the rule.)

We each started our “careers” with the Commercial Appeal at age 11 or twelve (I forget.)

As Commercial Appeal carriers we arose around 4:00 am seven days a week. The “paper station” where we obtained our supply of papers for the route was a ten minute, half mile bike ride from home.  During inclement winter weather Dad would sometimes arise and provide car transportation. But that was not often. The paper station was an open room with cinderblock walls located on the back side of Tull’s Buntyn Café. It contained eight or ten standup wooden tables where we could load our cloth satchels for carrying our papers up and down the streets on our route. There was a manager of the paper station, Harry Nash. His job, besides hiring paperboys, was two-fold. He made sure every lad showed up each day and would telephone those who overslept to get them going. He managed somewhere over 20 routes from the Buntyn station. Once a week we also had to bring our week’s collections.  Our “wages” came out of our collections, but we turned in the lion’s share of those collections to the paper’s coffers. (I think on my first route I netted maybe $25 a week.)

Most of the routes close to the station consisted of 90 to 100 houses. The routes out on the outer edges of the Buntyn territory were “car” routes for the older boys and could have 200 or more potential subscribers. A typical route managed a 90% subscription rate in those days.

Besides serving the route every day and being the collection agent for the paper, we also had to provide our own substitutes for planned, scheduled absences. Mr. Nash would find someone when we called in sick or were a “no-show”.

One of the much anticipated highlights of the day was the trip home after the route was done.  That usually involved a stop in McLauren’s Bakery on Highland Street to grab a pair of four cent cinnamon rolls.  There were none better to my taste. I typically arrived home in time to grab a final hour’s nap before being called to breakfast and to dress for school. Mom’s normal morning wakeup call went, “Boys, this is the third time I’ve called you”.

Reaching driving age, I bid on one of the car routes. My “take” must have increased to something like $40+ a week. The best aspect of these routes was that they were “monthly” routes, meaning we didn’t have to go back trying to collect every week but could get by with once a month. Getting $2.20 each time was vastly better than 55 cents.

Noteworthy anecdotes from the years we threw papers will require a slower paced journey through my memory (and maybe an assist from Arthur and Paul).

Patriot Third Party

 

As my kids know and others can attest, I have for at least 40 years referred to myself politically as a “Radical Moderate”.  I include the adjective “radical” to differentiate from many people’s conception of “Moderates” as indecisive, shallow thinkers who aren’t interested enough to find out what’s going on and make decisive choices.  I could just as easily call myself a “conservative” Democrat, but that would be just as misunderstood. There are certain moral issues about which I have definite private opinions, but which I believe should not be addressed through legislation and governmental action. I will skip for now a lengthy discussion of examples on both sides.  But I do offer this introductory paragraph as a prelude to my thoughts on current politics.

Many people across the political spectrum decry the efficiency of America’s de facto two-party system as it seems to be straining in 2020-2021. This leads them to call for the emergence of a third party to solve whatever they believe are the failures of the status quo. The latest efforts have been public musings by Donald Trump himself suggesting he might form a “Patriot Party”. One assumes he means by this he would take with him all the “true Republicans” who were not RINOs.  The obvious observation is that this would be the opposite of expanding his base and would, therefore, fail.   Not only would the Patriot Party be a fringe party, the Republican Party they left behind would be more akin to the Republicans of the 50s and 60s in terms of size and strength.

As a Democrat I could navigate through those waters. But as a moderate I’d still strive for a more perfect party. That is to say, I do think a third party could succeed and even improve the American political landscape if it was positioned as a mainstream moderate party. A good 30%  or more moderate or conservative Democrats might have more in common with moderate Republicans than with the fringe leftists in their party. A Republican Party freed of its “Patriot” element might be open-minded enough to forge an alliance with enough moderate Democrats to produce a center party strong enough to win elections.

I doubt this will occur, though.  The gaps in the parties’ approaches to economic justice and civil rights issues will take more time before sufficient common ground is achievable.  Even the moderate wings of their parties. But one can dream.

Pressurizing?

It's been a while since I called out any of the news readers and commentators on NPR on matters of language or use of a questionable word form   So here's my seasonal contribution.
Driving home today I had the BBC's OS program (Outside Sources, for the uninitiated). They were reporting on today's press announcement that the Democratic House intends to write and approve two articles of Impeachment. In describing the first article involving Trump's effort to get Ukraine's president to damage Biden's campaign with charges of corruption in Ukraine. In explaining this the BBC reporter said that Trump will be charged with "PRESSURIZING" the government of Ukraine to announce such an investigation.  Why would the Brits believe that word was interchangeable with "PRESSURING". I had always assumed PRESSURIZING more accurately applied to situations where pressure such as air or gas was injected into a finite space to be eventually used and/or released at a later time. A tire is pressurized  A driver might be pressured to apply pressurized brakes to slow a vehicle.  But how could Trump pressurize Zelenski to take a desired action?

Inadequately researched, distracting TV commercials

I'm nor sure why the culprits are always the writers and directors of commercials for pharmaceuticals. Probably a coincidence. Months ago a commercial for Myrbetric pulled this faux pas.This time it's Jardiance. The main character in their vignette is a female band director who looks like she's trying to fly rather than direct. She uses even, symmetrical arm flapping movements to "lead" her band. I have no idea if the medicine is causative or not. But I do know that virtually every instrumental musician has to wince every time the commercial is aired. No conductor or director would want to be portrayed this way. 

ITALIAN TOILETS

Thoughts and observations concerning public bathrooms in Italy:

(We were told some towns and tourist sites in Europe would charge for access to a public bathroom. In some cases it would be advisable to use the facilities of cafes and restaurants where we ate. These observations include both “pay toilets” and free ones in cafes.) My observations are offered for those like my wife and I who travel infrequently.

1. Our tour bus had an onboard john, but it was never made available to us. Guess none of our bus excursions were deemed long enough to meet any real needs. And later the facilities onboard the excursion boat were inoperable or closed.
2. Our first opportunity was a “pay” facility in Cinque Terre. Sitting at a card table outside the entryway was a lady collecting one Euro (about $1.30) per person. Facilities were not terrible, but forgettable.
3. The convenience store in Pisa which was our meetup point allowed use of facilities with proof of purchase from the store. A guard sat at the entryway punching store receipts to prevent unqualified use.
4. The only other “pay” facility I accessed was in Venice on St Mark’s square. It had two coin operated gates (1.5 Euros) and a live person to facilitate use of the automated equipment and/or prevent bypassing. Like many of the restaurant baths this one was up one flight of stairs.
5. Several of the restaurant baths were laid out strangely, at least unusual by American standards. They had a group sink/mirrors/towel (or air dryer) area serving both males and females. The private toilet stalls were marked for either Male or Female and had the expected door lock.
6. Some of the washup sinks had hot and cold faucets controlled by foot pedals rather than handles.
7. I don’t know about the ladies’ facilities, but several of the toilets in the men’s stalls possessed no toilet seat as we know and expect it. There was just the porcelain toilet bowl.
8. Bathrooms in hotels typically contained two odd features.
   * In addition to a standard toilet there is a free standing bidet.
   * Limited shower curtains. One end of shower stall often left open, uncovered.

"Some people say"

If President Trump were really as honestly pleased as he claims with the compliments "some people" pay him for things like the DDay speech that was written for him to deliver he would identify, name those "some people" plus the speech writer. Just sayin'.

Trump tax returns

Random thoughts on Donald Trump. The Congressional Democrats, and the mainstream media:

Who prior to 2017 could have imagined a scenario in which any politician, much less the President of the United States, would feel compelled or emboldened to declare on national that he was a “stable genius”?

Since some time in 2015 or 2016 Donald Trump has claimed that he couldn’t or wouldn’t release his federal income tax returns apparently for any year because he was in an ongoing status of being “under audit”. Never mind that there is apparently no law, no legal justification for this claim. Nowhere does anything assert that being under audit represents a valid justification for wrapping his data in a cloke of secrecy. A few tepid justifications have been offered by him and his lawyers and supporters claiming that the great unwashed public would simply not be equipped to understand his returns without jumping to erroneous conclusions. The questions raised by this situation are many. Is EVERY year involved in an unresolved audit? Has IRS not been able to wrap up any of the specific audits? If some specific years have had their audits concluded and closed out, why can’t the returns for those years and the audit findings be revealed? How does the fact that each year an audit is opened relate to prior years? Why doesn’t the media press the president on the public’s right to know what public officials’ finances looks like? How is concealing this in the best interests of the nation?

And this week Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has bought into the administration’s claim that Congress cannot compel release of this information absent a clear “legislative purpose” to Congress’s demand. I do predict this defense will eventually crumble before the third equal branch of the federal government, the Judiciary. But this three years+ of “running out the clock” is at a minimum frustrating. And the claim by Trump and his supporters that the entire question was rendered moot by the 2016 elections is insulting and one that the media and the Congressional Democrats should not let stand unchallenged.