My father was a child of the depression. He fought in the Pacific during World War Two. He was a construction, journeyman, electrician and although he held a bachelors degree in electrical engineering he preferred to work in construction. In the late fifties and early sixties his take home pay was actually more than if he worked as an engineer. He had to work his way through high school and college and he had the attitude that his kid would not have to do the same.
So when I was fourteen and all my friends had paper routes either with the Los Angeles Times or the Santa Monica Evening Outlook. (The latter was referred to by my mom as, "The Daily Fish Wrapper.") There was an opening for a route with the Outlook.
Since I was a minor I had to have written parental permission to take the job. So I asked my folks to sign the papers. I didn't think it would be a big deal. After all lots of kids had paper routes. And my dad used to tell me stories of when he had a route as a kid.
Well the preverbal shit hit the fan with my father. He was adamantly against it. "My son does NOT need to workÖ he should enjoy his childhood." Of course it never occurred to him to raise my fifty cents monthly allowance to something with which I might better enjoy my childhood.
Well the battle went on for a few days and my mom and I finally got the old man to reluctantly acquiesce and I got the route.
The old saying, "Be careful what you wish for," comes to mind when I think about that paper route. The only route available was the twelve blocks between Fourteenth Street on the west and Cloverfield Blvd. to the East. From Olympic Blvd. on the North down to Pico Blvd. at the south. This area of town was known as, "Ghost Town," because it was populated by predominately black and a Mexican American family's. As kids we were warned to stay well away from that section of town, "if you knew what was good for you." It was doubly so in my house as both my parents were vehemently raciest.
Of course after awhile on the job I discovered that most of my costumers were ordinary honest folk who owned their homes, raised kids and did the stuff we did in our neighborhoods. Heck, they even read the newspaper, what a shock.
Now my mode of transportation at that time was a red and white J.C. Higgins coaster break bicycle with a gooseneck and butterfly handle bars. I had a rack on the back to which my paper bags were affixed. I really loved that bike.
The guy we worked for, Bruce, was a newspaper distributor he had a pickup truck where he toted the bundles of newspapers for each route he managed. My buddies and I would be at the same street corner, (Chelsea Ave. and Santa Monica Blvd.), across from McKinley elementary school, each afternoon, after school. Bruce would stop, growl something at us while he'd sling out onto the sidewalk our respective bundles of newspapers. We would then fold each newspaper and put them in our bags. We'd hike the bags up onto our bikes and peddle to our respective routes to deliver the papers to our customers.
Because my route was in a "bad" part of town I also carried a long machete in my bags. My dad let me buy the machete from the Army Navy store on Second St. in Santa Monica where we used to buy camping gear for our vacations.
Back in the Forties and Fifties in Southern California (before apartment buildings became the rage) people built what were called Bungalow Courts. Bungalow Courts consisted of several, small, single, one or two bedroom houses built next to but not connected to each other. They were built in a row, perpendicular to the street and along one side of the lot with a concrete walk connecting them along the other side of the lot. Sometimes there would be a house built at the end of the concrete walk making the row of houses "ell" shaped. This offered each renter a single family house not attached to the houses around them, pretty cool. There were several bungalow courts on my route.
If you were delivering to a regular single house you could swing up on the sidewalk and fling the newspaper on to the porch on the fly and continue on your way. But the bungalow courts were different. Inevitably out of four or five houses in the court only one or maybe two would take the newspaper. So you would have to ride back into the court to get the newspaper to the right porch. The more houses you put the paper on the porchesÖ the more chance you had of getting a tip on collection day.
One bungalow court in particular was a bit of a pain. Only one house took the newspaper and of course it was the house all the way at the far end of the court.
Next door to this court was a single house on a huge lot who's backyard was rife with overgrown and untrimmed trees, scraggily bushes and an unkempt crabgrass lawn. An old dilapidated back yard swing set rusted in the corner. I suppose the kids who played there were long grown up and moved away. There was a five foot high wooden fence separating the two properties covered with a thick, ratty Honeysuckle.
Also in that yard was a very large German Sheppard dog. Every time I went to deliver the newspaper the dog would go shit-house. Barking and running at the fence and at the last moment leap up and try to jump the fence to get at me. The dog was a good jumper and damn near cleared the fence a couple of times. I thought to myself, "One of these days that dog is gonna make it over and I'm gonna be in a world of shit." I had other dogs on my route and I made friends with all of them. I really like dogs and enjoyed petting and scratching them. I even got some "Dog Yummys" and would give all my dogs on the route treats. But this guy would not relent, he wanted no part of making friends with me. The treats I tossed over the fence just sat there he wouldn't even eat them after I left. I guess they rotted or the ants ate them. This dog was bad news.
One day I turned down the court walkway and headed to the last house and the dog jumped on the fence and, sure enough he scrambled over it. He hit the ground between me and the fence and in one leap he was on me. So fast, I was still sitting on my bike and before I could split he had a grip on my right thigh. I reached into my paper bags and pulled out my machete and raised it high in the air. I was gonna chop that monsters head off. Just then this woman came running up the walkway yelling in Spanish and waving her arms like a mad women just out of the loony bin. I was panicked. Then I noticed that there was no blood and really no pain even though the dog was growling, shaking my leg and pulling at it. The woman was pointing at her mouth shaking her head. I reached down and pulled up the dogs lips and saw that the poor guy didn't have a tooth in his mouth and my leg was fine. I started to crack up laughing and petted the dog. I realized that he didn't eat the treats I gave him because he couldn't chew them.
I learned that the dogs name was Hector. They had to feed poor Hector cottage cheese and stuff like that. So after that, every time I delivered the paper Hector would come at the fence barking and growling I would stick my arm over and let him grab on and gnaw and shake the heck out of it. We became great friends. Ol' Hector was a pretty cool dog.