The Last Year, Part 1

Hi All,

Well, after a lot of years, it is looking more like by the end of 2018, I will join the ranks of retired people. It’s likely going to take all of 2018, but that’s my goal.

I’ve been so fortunate to have found work to earn first pocket money, then money for school, and then to support myself, and later my wife and a bit later the whole family. It was my duty, and responsibility and I was proud that while we were never rich, I think we did ok.

I’m beginning to get a bit reflective. Yeah, it’s still 10 months away, but I’m thinking more of the actual ‘hanging up the boots’ then I ever let myself  think before. I’m more looking forward to ending the work phase, than the time starting in 2019.

I know you all have a pretty good idea what I’ve been doing all these years, but I’m going to work through the list anyway.

1960-1962: Shopping news and Lake City Journal. Outside of a few babysitting gigs with my sister Arla, this was my first regular job. Twice a week there was the shopping news, a paper with just ads, and once a week the Lake City Journal, a community paper. There were no subscriptions, people got the things if they wanted them or not, and some really didn’t. The papers came to our house, and your Granma Betty, my mom, rubber banded all those papers so they were ready for me when I got home from school. The journal even did an article on us, Mom and me, took a picture with Mom folding the papers, and me eating a bowl of ice cream. That was a bit embarrassing. They paid me every month with an actual paycheck.

1962-1965: Seattle Times Carrier.The typical paper boy. The papers arrived at a paper shack, a tiny building that was the hub for 8-12 carriers, that fanned out in all directions after getting their allotment. The deal was that I was charged a wholesale cost for each and every paper I got, and the theory was that I would collect the subscription rate from the people on my route. The difference would be my profit. Good in theory, but it only took a small percentage of my customers to not pay and I was in the hole as I needed to pay my bill to the times. I made some money most months, but there were a few where I was on the short end. 
On Sundays, the papers were pretty big. Each Sunday my dad, your Grandpa Bill, would use the car to get the papers We got to where the delivery was pretty evenly split between Dad covering one side of the street to my covering the other. He got to know my route as well as I did. I had what they called a route book. It was a small ring binder that had a sheet for each customer that had the address and name details and the type of subscription they had. Daily Only, Daily and Sunday, or Sunday only.
The papers arrived at the shack in a Master Movers truck. The bundles of paper were bound with a copper wire. The driver would use a hooked tool to grab the bundles and throw them to the end of the truck. Whatever carriers were there at the shack would take them and stack them inside. The shack manager (another kid) would dole out the papers to each carrier adding or subtracting from the standard bundle to exactly match your routes order.

1965-1968: Woodland Park. I’ve written about my Woodland park days before in great (at least long) detail  I can always resend those to you on request 😊

1967-1968: Safeway Store 91: Another ‘boy’ name. Officially I was a courtesy clerk, but box boy was the familiar title. Bagging groceries, changing the reader board Ad signs, cleaning the parking lot, filling the bag bins, were the core jobs. The store assistant managers, looking to get some cheap help for their departments, soon ‘borrowed’ me from the front of the store, to doing what should have been journeymen (more pay) jobs but paying me the bottom of the scale courtesy clerk wages. It was OK by me at the time, being a bit naïve, as it was a break from the front of the store work.
I worked Saturday night in the Meat department, cleaning up the butcher equipment, raking (yes raking) the floor and filling up the display racks with cold cuts and hot dogs. In those days it was a law that you couldn’t sell meat unless a licensed meat cutter was on duty, and Safeway didn’t want to pay double time for Sunday work.
My other extra job was working in the produce department. Stacking boxes in the cooler to rotate the fruits and veggies, and trimming of the lettuce, celery and bananas. There was this motor driven razor blade thing that would slice whatever you stuck into it, with the trimmed pieces falling into a huge screw driven garbage disposal, called a Gar-Ball. Really, not something that fit into the job description, and the spinning razor would make that unlawful for a minor these days to operate, but I came out of it with all my fingers intact.

On Wednesday nights, pretty often my dad would snag the grocery delivery for my store. It was fun helping him unload his truck and store all those pallets of stuff in the back room.

The store had this freight elevator that could be used to bring pallets up or down from the basement. I liked working that thing. The basement had the same floor space as the main sales floor, but only a little bit of it was used for extra stock that didn't fit on the shelves. Way over in the back corner was the Civil Defense Fallout Shelter supplies, food, water, medical, sanitary and radiation monitoring stuff. Yeah, those were the duck and cover days. 

More Later

Dad