Still Just a Paperboy

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Nearly every Thursday afternoon when college is in session, I run a short delivery route for the student newspaper, of which I’m the adviser. I deliver papers to three locations at the Longview center before heading home, while a student worker covers the considerably larger Kilgore College campus.

The first time I did this last August, it occurred to me that I had come full circle.

Forty-five years ago, I began peddling newspapers downtown for the afternoon edition of the Longview paper. As soon as I got out of school at nearby Foster Junior High, I rode my banana-seat bike to the office to pick up my bundle of the Longview Daily News.

My stops included the Joe M. Hendrix building that now houses most of KC-Longview. In 1968 that building was the Sears store. I parked my seat bike outside, grabbed the cloth satchel of papers and walked through the store each weekday afternoon, searching out the sales clerks who bought a copy for a dime each day. I got to keep a nickel for each paper sold. On a good day I sold 200 copies or so, netting $10. That was pretty good walking-around money for a 13-year-old.

Across the street from another building where I drop papers at KC-Longview — a former savings-and-loan built after my paper route days had ended — is Fire Station 1, still in operation. On warm days when the bay doors are open, I can see the brass fire pole inside. That was another of my stops. I would walk upstairs to sell a few copies to the firefighters up in the living quarters. I never sold more than a couple, but this gave me an excuse to slide down the pole, just like the firefighters did.

I’m sure OSHA, liability rules and other red tape would prohibit the fire department from letting a kid slide down the fire pole, but it sure was fun.

Many of the retail stores where I sold newspapers are still in business — Sears and Dillards moved to the mall. McCarley Jewelers left downtown, as did Hurwitz, an upscale men’s clothing store, but both still thrive. The mall was still nearly 20 years away from being built in 1968, so downtown remained the retail hub. That meant, back when most adults read the newspaper, this route was filled with folks willing to buy a copy of the afternoon edition — even if they had already read the morning paper.

As I’ve written before, my favorite stop was the Brass Rail, a downtown tavern that by late afternoon was filled with smoke and red-faced oil wildcatters playing dominoes and 42, some spitting vaguely in the direction of spittoons sitting on the unspeakably filthy floor. I don’t recall ever seeing a female in the place. It was not a place for respectable women, with its cloud of cigar smoke, spitting, shouts of glee and cursing over the dominoes slapped down on the table.

Some of the men wandered over from their offices in the Petroleum Building. Others I saw in their Bramlette Building offices, which had a luncheonette in the basement where occasionally I would spend a couple of bucks of my earnings buying a hamburger.

The Brass Rail fascinated me, these big-bellied men knocking back glasses of whiskey, complaining about dry wells or the oil-depletion allowance. One fellow wore a gold ring the size of my thumb and exuded oilman wealth. One Christmas season, he handed me a $20 bill for the paper, told me to keep the change. After that, every time I entered the Brass Rail I looked first for him, but lightning never struck twice, tip-wise.

My least-favorite stop was Kelly Plow, the factory near the corner of High and Cotton. The place was impossibly noisy and hot from the furnaces year-round. Grime coated every surface, so I walked through gingerly, trying not to touch anything that would stain my clothes and upset my mother.

The Glover-Crim building made me nervous as well, with its caged elevator and attendant. Something about that building, which was then in a state of decay and has since been restored, gave me the creeps. I went through it quickly selling a few papers to the scattering of tenants still left.

On the way home the other day, after dropping off the newspapers, I headed down Tyler Street toward Highway 80. A large magnolia tree sits on on the corner, next to a bar. A different bar once stood on the spot where that tree grows, built around the tree, which was much smaller than but still poked up out of the roof. The bar had a dirt floor and a decidedly blue-collar clientele, who looked as if they had just gotten off a shift at Kelly Plow.

It struck me as I drove home. After all these years, at least part of the time, I am still a paperboy.

 

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