MY BOOK...............LILAGCS (B2) 2

MY Parer Route Part 2

(continued  from Part 1)     

Somewhere next was a restaurant called Stub’s. It was the forerunner to the Stub’s cafe at the Clay County fair and also there was a Stub’s Ranch kitchen out south of town on the east side of highway 71. (My Grandmother’s use to love eating at all of them) One interesting note about the Stub’s I delivered a newspaper to was that one of the waitresses was the mother of one of my close Cub Scout friends, Kenny Harris. Mrs. Harris I think had worked there for a long time and she didn’t even have to write the orders down on a pad, I remember I was so amazed at her ability to remember the orders so well.

Here I am going to take a trip to my Cub Scout activity that I thought about when I mentioned it in the paragraph above. I attended Reynolds school (that was also known as the East school. In third grade I was old enough to join the cub scouts along with some of my other classmates. The other classmates that I recall were: David Polzin, Kenny Harris, (as I mentioned above), Hugh Tate, Kent Nelson and Kent Rozean. There were 6 of us and Mrs. Polzin, the other David’s mother, was our den mother. The Polzin’s lived right across the street from the school and made it very easy to walk there after classes was finished.

Now back to my paper route. After Stub’s cafe was a paint shop. It was owned by a man named Art Loats which also bore his name. Hanson’s Men’s Clothing Store was located in there somewhere as was the Spencer Music Store that I delivered a paper to.  Then I think there was small grocery store and then another cafe called Peterson’s Cafe as I continued south.

I remember Peterson’s Cafe because I would purchase small container of peanuts and in the small container would sometimes be a prize of money. The most I ever found at the bottom of the small containers was a 25 cent piece. (That was always an exciting find!)

I finally arrived at the corner where a department store where David Polzin, my Cub Scout friend’s dad worked called Davies. My friends dad’s name was Henry Polzin) I think Davies was on the corner of 5^th street and Main. I would then turn west down 5^th street and deliver papers to a couple of customers between the Main Street corner and the post office. I crossed the street south and I delivered a paper to Dr. Fair’s office. He was an optometrist and the one that fitted me with my first pair of 20/20 glasses.

Walking back East to Main Street put me on the corner where the Singer Sewing store was located. I had some customers up above the Singer Store and Leuthold and Crouse Men’s Clothing Store was located south next to the Singer Sewing Store.

The next delivery that I recall was in the basement level of a department store called Feldman’s. Feldman’s was unique in that it had an elevator and I use to love to ride the elevator down to the basement level to deliver a newspaper to the lady customer down there.

Continuing south after Feldman’s is a bit foggy. I know that there was a bank, Nelson’s Jewry Store in there somewhere before I got to the next customer that I remember, Bjornstad's Hardware Store. There was a very nice man that was neighbors to my Grandma Niemand on East 4^th street and his name was Bob Howe. Mr Howe had two boys and a girl that were close to my age that I use to play with when I was at Grandma’s house.

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.

My Book……………………LILAGCS (35)

June 25, 2011

June is almost Gone!

How time goes so fast …when you’re having fun or when you have limited choices of things to do!

I may have told you before in previous Blogs here in my Dr. Dave’s Memories, but I am writing a book filled with all of the material and memories I have included in this Blog. I have saved the pages of the book in Microsoft Publisher, (Print Publication) and find that I can transfer the stories from MS Publisher to this Blog fairly easily and also find that the photos also transfer.

In this Blog instead of picking up where I left off with my job at the LeFebure Corporation in Cedar Rapids about 1975  I am going to share with you some special events that I remember. These may not be in any particular order, but I will try and let you know where in my past they occurred.

The first one is from my days at the University of South Dakota where I began my college days. This was about 1959 and 1960.

This first event I labeled the “Hot Dog Machine”. It is an event that stands out in my mind that my roommate and I did about the same time we were developing the “Denny and Dave” radio show.

  The Hot Dog Machine

I would like to share a story about the “hotdog” machine with you. After we returned from Christmas the first year (1959), Denny brought an electric hotdog maker that he had gotten from his parents. You could attach a hotdog to each end of two carbon pointed rods. Plugging it in completed the electrical circuit and would cook the hotdog.

We lived directly across the street from the student Memorial Union that served sandwiches and many other short order meals. Each evening about 8 PM they would cook hamburgers and bring them to the dorm to sell. I think they sold for 20 cents.

Denny and I got the idea of going into business with our hotdog machine. We went to the store and purchased a couple of packages of uncooked hotdogs and fresh hotdog buns, a bottle of ketchup and a jar of mustard.

We started by going around to our friends on our floor of the dorm. Before we knew it we were so busy making and selling hotdogs because we sold them for 15 cents, 5 cents less than the hamburgers being sold by the Student Union.

We had to quit because we were not getting our studying done. We each earn 10 dollars from the hotdog sales profit and the sale of the machine.

 

 

My Book……………………LILAGCS (34)

June 23, 2011

 

Absent for a while but I keep trying!

 

Thanks to those of you that are checking out this Blog of mine. There have been some complications that have caused me not to be able to send out these Blogs on a regular basis.

The biggest complication is the lack of power (No electricity) We have been experiencing some challenging times with our current budget expenses.

For a few weeks we have had no electricity and also ran out of cooking gas for our kitchen stove. We were forced to place all of our monthly money  for food and cook with a charcoal grill. We managed to get along with the help of many friends and the good Lord’s Grace.

I will be picking up the Blog with my job at the LeFebure Corporation in my next Blog. I can’t say when we will have another “Power Outage” but be assured I will try my best to continue this Blog when I can. I will alert you readers with my email notification as I have done in the past. Thank you for your support , prayers and hanging in there with us. I am still hoping I might be able to publish the Book at some point in time. Any suggestions you might have will be gratefully appreciated!……

See you in a few days with more LILAGCS Blog.

My Book……………….….LILAGCS (33)

May 19, 2011

**********************

My Last LILAGCS was March 28th

I was about to tell you about my job at the LeFebure Corporation when our internet connection was interrupted off and on for over a month for one reason or another.

For me I am able to remember so much of the past (in detail) but at times I find it hard to remember the short term stuff. To quote my 5 year locker high school locker buddy,Kelley….. I sometimes can’t even remember what I had for breakfast!

Well I will attempt to go into the past, some 35 years ago, and tell you a little about my job a the LeFebure Corporation.

I read that I left off my Blog writing at the point where I had worked for FELCO (Farmer’s Elevator Company) for almost 8 years’ I could see that I was about as far up the corporate ladder as I could go at that point in time.

I opened my thoughts to finding another job in the field  of advertising.  It was during a visit to my first wife’s parents that I ran across an ad in the Cedar Rapids Gazette for an “advertising coordinator” which happened to be my title at Felco.

After finding the advertisement in the Cedar Rapids Sunday paper I sat down and drafted my resume. I sent my resume to the personnel directors office as instructed in the job ad.

In less than a week I was sitting at my desk at Felco when the phone rang and the man on the other end ask if I was able to talk. There was no one around me at the time so I said yes. He introduced himself as the personnel manager of the LeFebure Corporation in Cedar Rapids. He ask me if I would be able to come to Cedar Rapids for an interview. I told him yes and we set up an interview for the next week.

At that time, we had moved from our house in Fort Dodge to a small acreage north of Fort Dodge. I went to the interview and I felt very positive when it was finished.

In less than two weeks I received a call from the personnel manager inviting me to come work in the advertising department and be the Advertising manager for the LeFebure Corporation. The man that interviewed me was Warren S (I will call him) He was very proper and spoke with an Eastern accent even though he was from Chicago, he said.

It wasn’t too long after I started working at LeFebure that I came to the realization that the job was way bigger than I was lead to believe. I was responsible for the development of the national print media advertising with all the national Banking trade magazines  and the total production of those ads. I was to work with a large advertising agency CMF and Z to accomplish this.

In addition I was responsible for the development of a 40 by 60 foot banking equipment display and scheduling of all the national and state Banking Trade Shows , I was responsible for guiding the construction of the company’s display that would be taken and set up at each trade show in the major cities of the United States. I would work with a display company in Chicago to accomplish this task.

This meant many trips to Chicago and working with the representatives of the Osgood Display Company to develop the company’s Trade show display of the major banking and security systems. The display itself had to be transported in 2 large semi-trailer trucks.  It was my job to coordinate this shipment to the location og the Banking Shows.

In addition to these responsibilities I was also in charge with the companies printing supply department that stored and shipped the hundreds of pieces of Banking equipment and Security systems sales literature. This department also maintained the total mailing lists of all the companies, personnel and salesmen related to the company. At that time it was all done with the addressograph machines. These all had to be kept up-to-date and maintained. There were 4 employees that working in the supply department that I supervised. I also was responsible for the company News Letter Publication that was published monthly. I had an editor that was responsible for the production of the News Letter and never on time for work she was a real pain. It was usually an 8 to 14 page tabloid publication with many photographs of new facilities and renovations.

I was also in charge of the Company Photographer and his functions. I had a production artist that produced the camera-ready art that was used in the printing production of all the sales literature stored in the supply department.

You can see from my above brief explanation that my Advertising job was very large and the worst part of all was that the previous advertising manager was promoted to Marketing manage and he was constantly looking over my shoulder at my work. He expected me to operate as he did and it became very difficult circumstances to function under.

I did the best that I could and really didn’t do too bad considering everything. I will share with you some of my thoughts and feeling as I worked.

One thing that stands out in my memories of LeFebure is the total lack of respect for the people that worked there. I was told I was not to associate with the manufacturing area of the company because they were “Labor” and I was a part of “Management”. That went totally against every principle I had ever been taught. It also explained the labor problem that was always evident.

The biggest problem is that I was dependent on the factory was needed to produce the prototype equipment I was to display at the trade shows. I ignored the fact that I was avoid associating with the employees in the factory.

I remember my first experience with working with the Osgood Display company in Chicago.

Up to them, my only experience flying was I small one engine airplanes and I was basically afraid of flying.

The first Banking Tradeshow  trip to Chicago I flew on a DC-9. And it totally surprised me ..it was so smooth compared to the small planes I was use to in the past. After we landed, a man that was sitting beside me said that the flight we just experienced was probable one of the roughest rides I would experience. Well, compared to the small one engine airplanes I had flown in in the past it was not rough to me at all.

This first Trade show was in Chicago at one of the larger hotels in downtown , like the Conrad Hilton Hotel. Our semi-trucks that carried our display to the show had arrived and there were special union men called “Dredge Men” to unload the display crates.

I had to make all arrangements for the men needed to assemble our display All of the men that worked at the Show that assembled our display were Union workers and I was flatly told I was not to lift a finger to help them do anything in assembling the display. I was only suppose to supervise the assembly from the assembly plans drawn on a sheet of paper that I had brought with me. The cost of everything was outrageous, for example, a roll of silver duck-tape cost $30 and was added to the costs we were charged to assemble the display.

I will stop here and finish next Blog.

My Book ………………….LILAGCS (32)

March 28,2011

Our Internet connection was down again for a while and it just came back tonight.

I was messing around with my email account and ran across this Statler Brother Burma Shave clip that was sent to me, I think it was Carmen who sent it to me and I may have forwarded it to you guys, but it is worth resending I feel because it really covers our “growing up in the 50s era”

Here it is and I hope you all enjoy it as much as I did and still do…..http://oldfortyfives.com/DYRT.htm>

I will try to get back to my Blog about my past jobs in the next few days.

My Book………………….LILAGCS (31)

March,15,2011

Back to Writing

It has been almost 3 months since I have written anything in this Blog. I apologize, but after we lost our internet connection in late December it has been very difficult getting back in the swing.

That is not a very good reason but it is the only one I have. I think I left off with my job at Felco and I will try to pick it up from there. That was about 1966 to 1974.

It may take me a little while to get back in the swing of writing but things have stabilized out a bit and I will do my best.

I