It wasn’t easy for an 8-year-old boy to find work in Marceline, Missouri, in 1953. I knew that the Marceline News had paper-delivery boys, so I went to its office and asked to be one, but I was turned down.
I found an ad in Boys’ Life posted by the Grit publishing company, wanting to hire boys to deliver its weekly Grit newspaper. There was just one problem: The minimum age to be accepted as a Grit paper-delivery boy was 9, and Mom would have to sign for me. Still, I asked my mother if she’d sign for me, claiming I was 9. Even though I was a year younger, she thought I was capable and signed. So, we filled out the order form, mailed it in, and waited.
I received a starter package of 10 Grit papers in the mail. Boy, I was excited, and I started knocking on doors to sell my paper for 10 cents an issue. From my first sales of those 10 papers, I kept 40 cents for myself and mailed 60 cents to the Grit company at the end of the week with a request to send me 15 Grit papers the following week. In time, my regular customers buying a paper every week grew to over 30. While building my business, I always had a few extra papers to have available to sell to a new customer.
My favorite delivery was to Mr. McCandless, the town barber, and his son, who barbered with him. They became good customers early on, starting with buying just one paper and, in time, two and then three each week. The Grit paper became so popular with their customers that they’d look for one to read as soon as they came in the door. On Saturday morning, their busiest day, more than one customer would want to read the Grit paper while waiting for a haircut, so Mr. McCandless increased his purchase.
Mr. McCandless also referred me to people who wanted to buy a paper of their own. One of my most memorable referrals was to a well-known old man in the Marceline community affectionately called “Old Wampus.” When I asked Mr. McCandless how to find Old Wampus, he said to look somewhere along the downtown blocks of Main Street on a Saturday morning until I found him. So I would, and I almost always located Old Wampus that way. I’d ensure I had one paper not yet sold each week, especially for him. And rain or shine, summer or winter, I searched for him somewhere downtown on Saturday morning to deliver his paper.
That was always an interesting experience, because when I found Old Wampus, he usually searched all his pockets for coins to pay me the exact amount. In the process, he’d pull out a big blue handkerchief, a bottle of special elixir that he must’ve drunk for colds and such, a pocketknife, and other odds and ends until, finally, he found the proper change to pay me. He was a friendly old guy who always smiled, so I waited patiently for him. The rumor was that as a younger man, he’d been an accomplished jazz musician. A lesson about people I learned young was to be kind and respectful to everyone regardless of their appearance or apparent position in life. We never know what hardships they’ve had or what burdens they might still bear. All people are deserving of basic human dignity and respect. I was always respectful to Old Wampus.
On Saturday afternoons, I treated myself to a double movie matinee at the Uptown Movie Theater with my friends. A ticket was just 10 cents for me under 12. Popcorn, a box of Sugar Daddys or Junior Mints, and a soft drink cost 5 cents each. After spending only 25 cents of my hard-earned money, I was set for four hours of cinematic entertainment by Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, the Lone Ranger, Hopalong Cassidy, or some other cowboy hero of the 1950s. We also had short movies with superheroes, such as Superman, and there were always Disney cartoons or Looney Tunes between the movies.
In the summer of 1956, we moved to Brookfield, Missouri, where I attended the seventh grade. I sold my Grit paper route for $5 to Keith Earl Wilson, one of my best friends. I figured that selling my business for the amount I made in a month was a fair price. Later, as an adult, I had a different idea about a reasonable price for a small, well-established business, but a deal was a deal. We shook hands on it, and it was done.
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