My Job With The Times Journal
(Carrying the papers was not difficult; collecting from the customers was.)
Screen 1 of 2In earlier stories I referred several times to my job as a carrier for the Times Journal, a daily newspaper published and distributed in Bowling Green during the first part of the century. Delivering the papers six days each week was demanding but not too difficult. Of course it was irritating at times when some of the customers would complain to the office if the paper was not carefully put inside the front screen door or if it came a few minutes late. But in general, I was able to deliver the hundred or so papers each day without much trouble--service for which I was paid a total of $2.50 a week.
Collecting from the customers on Saturday morning, however, was very frustrating. They paid only 10cents for six papers delivered to their homes, but parting with that dime each week for some of them was a sad event to be avoided as long as possible.
I remember particularly a Mr. Potter who lived on the north side of 10th Street not far from the Times Journal Building. It was often said by people who knew him that "Mr. Potter still has the first dime he ever made." That may have been an exaggeration, but he was certainly "well off" and yet very stingy. And I can assure the reader that being chased by me every Saturday morning to collect for the paper was for him a ritual he enjoyed to the fullest. For me, however, it was a task I did not enjoy at all.
My weekly search for him used to remind me of the ceremonial fox hunts held near Bowling Green each year by those wealthy and agile enough to ride the horses, and silly enough to wear the fancy costumes that were usually too tight for them.
I knew I could not find Mr. Potter at home. Earlier experience had taught me that. He was always to be found somewhere around Fountain Square, but each Saturday in a different place. He saw to that. Sometimes he would be in the American National Bank; at other times in Moore's Men's Clothing Store, or at the Helm Hotel on the corner; and occasionally he would just be hiding in one of the alleys leading into the square. He knew I would be looking for him, and his game plan was to keep just out of my sight. At least, that is the way it appeared to me, after many hunts.
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