...and I'm thinking about the Los Angeles Herald Examiner

Mr. Owens dropped our evening edition of the Herald Examiner newspapers off every afternoon at the Shell Station right next to Marty’s Hamburgers (Home of the Combo) at 10558 W. Pico Boulevard in West Los Angeles. My buddy Lawrence Wilcox and I would  arrive ahead of him most days, and we’d wait at Marty’s where Howard Bassman or his brother Jeff would sometimes serve us up a bag of Chili Fritos for about 49 cents. Some days…probably more times than not…they’d just give it to us. I can distinctly remember Howard discretely waving me off when I went to pay.  We’d sit on the stools that surrounded three sides of Marty’s and talk with the regulars. We’d kibitz with old guys like Bill, who  were dressed in khaki work clothes and worn ball caps and would sit drinking hot coffee on warm afternoons while telling stories about hunting rabbits in Cheviot Hills long before the area was developed with high-end homes and a golf course.



Eventually Mr. Owens would drive up with this American made gold station wagon (until he got a new avocado green Country Squire with faux wood paneling on the side), and hurriedly drop off our papers. He was always in a rush…and usually burdened by a slacking fellow paper-boy or who had called in sick thus requiring him to cover the route.

 

 

Lawrence had a traditional bicycle paper route that required him to fold and rubber-band his papers in thirds to make them easier to throw. I had a unique route in that I delivered The Examiner at the Century Towers…two tall upscale condominium towers in the Century City…right across from the famed Hillcrest Country Club (where George Burns and Milton Berle supposedly played cards every day). My papers didn’t need to be folded, so most days I’d stay and help Lawrence get his papers ready (he had about 40 as I recall) before dumping my 60 or so papers into my over-the-shoulder bags and peddling my 10-speed up Pico Boulevard (on the right side of the road next to the curb…not blocking a lane of traffic). Cars would whizz by as I rode up Pico past the Rancho Park Golf Course, the Presbyterian Church, the car wash and the Los Angele Rams season ticket office. Eventually I’d ride by the Hello Dolly set on the famed 20^th Century Studio lot before pulling into the Century Towers complex to deliver my papers. I’d say high to Chuck the doorman (his son played running back as LSU), and then take the elevator up to the 28^th floor of the west tower to start my paper throwing descent down the stairwells.

 

 

I had some pretty highfaluting clients in those days…people like David Jansen (at the height of the Fugitive…he was on east end of the 28^th floor), Burt Lancaster (he was on 15…but had two condos converted to one…and you could see the ocean on a clear day), comedian Totie Fields, actor-comedian Phil Silvers,  Republican philanthropist Margaret Brock (she LOVED me…used to tell me I could be a senator someday) and even Betty White’s mother. I got to know her daughter, who would regularly come to visit at the height of her Mary Tyler Moore popularity.

I’d like to think there are few people that could have ever mastered that route the way I did. In the early years, when I was in about 5^th grade, I struggled a bit. As I got older and moved onto Junior High, I could fly through both 28 story buildings in almost no time. In the last two years…just before high school, I prepared for my looming gridiron career by running up the stairs with the papers. I could spin the unfolded papers from 20 yards and get them to stop inches from the threshold with the evening’s headline facing the door.

Every year I’d write holiday cards (my mother would actually make me write them long hand), and I’d receive hundreds of dollars each December in holiday money (Mrs. Brock was especially generous). Immediately after, my father would make me write expansive thank you cards expressing my gratitude for the generous checks [BTW…for the folks in #1504 that kept asking me not to throw the paper under the gap in the door so that your little dog wouldn’t rip it to shreds…my inability to perfect that toss was directly tied to your inability to find your check book each holiday season]. After I’d finish both 28-story towers each day, I’d hop back on my American made Schwinn and ride up the 20^th Century Studios entrance to deliver five evening papers at the guard shack. Once in a blue moon…I’d seem some big time actor or actress from the silver screen…and that always warranted a story at the dining room table with mom and dad. One night I saw Dean Martin walking across the set. He was wearing black slacks, a white long sleeve dress shirt and he was smoking a cigarette. I could spend the rest of my life trying, and I’ll never look as cool as he did for those few seconds.



 

I gave up that paper route when I entered the my first year of high school. The demands of football were too great to keep up the route, plus I wanted to make the most of the leg muscles I’d developed in the stairwell. Never accomplished anything of note on the field, but if there was a Hall of Fame wing for blocking sled stamina (or game time mediocrity)…I’d be in Canton.

What’s the point of all this? Well…as is too often the case here…I really don’t know. I was leaving the house for work about 6am yesterday and when I got to the  bottom of the front steps, I bent over, picked up the paper, and flawlessly tossed it up on the front porch like a pro. It made me reminisce about those early paperboy days, and I recalled that over the six years I had that paper route, my father never let me call in sick. Even on rainy winter Sunday mornings  when I didn’t feel well, he made me get up before dawn to deliver the Sunday edition (the one morning paper of the week). After serving in battle in WWII and Korea, he really wasn’t moved by any excuse I might have for not being up to delivering 60 papers in a carpeted, air-conditioned and heated building. I like to think that work ethic served me well both as an IBEW electrician and even now in my current work-life, but I fear much of it has faded.

Have a great weekend and if you can, take about 4 1/2 minutes and listen to this morning’s song. If you do…close your eyes and try to remember something in your life that was nice and really mattered. If you do, you’ll find yourself smiling…and it will set you up for an even better weekend.

Oh yeah, if you're old enough to still get a newspaper delivered to your home, try to remember the person that makes that happen this December.

It wasn't the ride...it was the weight