MY Book...............LILAGCS (B2) 1

My Paper Route

Sometime around my 6^th grade I become interested in having a paper route. I remember a couple of brothers from school got me interested in having a route. I am not sure how I got so lucky, but I was given a route that totally covered the business district of the town. To start with it was mostly on the West side of the main Street of Spencer. I say to start with, because as I will explain later I eventually got both sides of the main business district.

I started at the Spencer Daily Report’s office and went South to where I lived, the Fire Station.

I will start when I picked up my 121 newspapers in the basement part of the Spencer Reporter building and counting them I started my route. My first customer was a small print shop in the basement of the Tangney Hotel. I found the printing business to be an attraction to me. Back then all of the type in that print shop was lead type and it was all “handset”. You pretty much had to think backwards when placing the type in the type holder and guess what, for a dyslectic that was a natural thing.

I ended up working in the printing and publishing business later in life (Wallace’s Farmer Publishing, Farm Progress Publishing, Garner Publishing and my own printing and sign painting business in my future career days.

From the small print shop I found myself going up some steps to a Barber Shop directly above the print shop. This was interestingly enough the first place I was taken for my first haircut by my dad and mother about 11 years before. I was about 12 ½ now.

Now let me point out something, I am not able to remember all of my paper customers but I will try to recall as much as I can as I walk down Main Street to my last customer....the fire station and my own home. The next delivery that I remember making as I walked south along the West side of Main Street were some law offices and below the law office was another barbershop.

I remember there were two men with the last name of Green who were brothers to the barber that had cut my hair in the Tangney Hotel shop. There were three Green brothers that were all barbers. (Funny what I remember! sometimes I can’t even remember what I had for breakfast some mornings) I used the last comment I took from a very good friend, Kelle Hoskins) Kelley was my locker partner for all our high school years in Sac City.