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They were the worst of times;
they were the worst of times. No pal, there were no best of times, they
were all bad. I should have read the small print, but who would have
thought the Fort Dodge Messenger would try to pull a fast one on
some stupid 14-year-old kid.
In 1949, there were nine paperboys in Rolfe; seven delivering the Des
Moines Register and Tribune, and two delivering the Fort Dodge
Messenger. I use the word paperboys, not to be sexist, but because
they were all boys. I delivered the evening Tribune, and my route
covered the southwest corner of town, running up the street west of the
Methodist church to the top of the hill, eventually ending up at
Thompson’s pond, then heading back east along the highway ending up at
Wickre’s mill.
It’s funny, I can’t remember what I did yesterday, but I can still
remember most of my customers up the street west of the church: the
Molyneuxs kitty-corner across the street from the church; the Porters
two houses down; the Dickeys right after the railroad tracks; next door
the Tiernans; further down the street the Loxtercamps with the little
boys in the yard, …. . The one person I will always remember is the lady
who once gave me a cinnamon roll that still causes my mouth to water.
She met me at the door and told me she just took a batch out of the oven
and gave me one. After that whenever I delivered her paper and smelled
baking coming from the kitchen, I tried making my presence known by
delivering the paper with a little more gusto, but unfortunately my
cries went unheeded and my fantasy of an endless stream of cinnamon
rolls was only that.
I had 20 daily Tribunes and 30 Sunday Registers. The
Tribune cost 30 cents a week, and the Sunday Register 15
cents, which meant every Saturday morning I’d collect a total of six
dollars from my Tribune customers and $4.50 from my Register
customers, which amounted to a weekly collection of $10.50. Of course,
most of that money went to the Des Moines Register and Tribune
company. After my Saturday collections, I dutifully headed for the Rolfe
State Bank, where Bill Spencer would count all my dimes and nickels,
make out a money order and mail it off to the Des Moines Register.
For me, my take was a penny and a half for each daily Tribune,
and three cents for each Sunday Register, which amounted to a
weekly take of $2.70, more than enough for me to head off to the Cozy
Corner at the south end of main street to play Knockout or Mermaid for
hours on end on their pinball machine. One of the most exciting times in
Rolfe in those days was when the Cozy Corner would get in a new pin ball
machine.
The Fort Dodge Messenger had a more laissez faire attitude
towards its paperboys and allowed them to roam the town at will. I
remember after I retired from my Tribune route and started
delivering the Messenger, I’d meet Herbie Bishop, the other
Messenger paperboy at the time, ten times a night as our routes
crisscrossed each other. One nice thing about delivering newspapers in a
small town is you get to know every nook and cranny in town, who were
the nice people, who were the cheapskates, even who was growing the
watermelons.
It took me a little less than two hours to deliver 73 papers. I started
on the east side of town, eventually working my way to Main Street and
Monk Taylor’s Royal 400 garage. Sometimes I would stop and treat myself
to a Mallow Cup or maybe a Royal Crown soda, about the only place in
town that sold them. Monk Taylor was a nice man and would kid me about
my Mallo Cup addiction. I was one of the few kids that liked Royal
Crowns. It didn’t have the fizz of a Coke, but it was a lot bigger and
for me quantity always trumped quality. I was considered a soda pig by
my peers.
But the sad state of affairs I found myself in the summer of 1951 had
nothing to do with Herbie Bishop or Monk Taylor, but with my
ill-conceived plan to win a new Schwinn Phantom, the crème de la
crème of bicycles, from the Fort Dodge Messenger company.
One year, the powers that be at the Messenger decided on a plan
of action to increase their circulation by giving prizes to its
paperboys for bringing in new customers. I forget the exact number, but
it was something like five new customers and the Messenger would
give a paperboy a trip to Fort Dodge to see a circus. (It wasn’t Barnum
and Bailey.) Well, they didn’t exactly send out a limo or anything like
that, but they did put the paperboys up in a hotel room (with about a
dozen other paperboys). I don’t remember the name of the hotel, but the
name Central Hotel rings a bell, and it was on Central Avenue right in
downtown Fort Dodge. It has been a long time, but I do remember
something about bombing bags of water from our third floor window, as
well as a lot of cursing from below as well as a rabid hotel manager
pounding on the door screaming at the top of his lungs. You would have
thought he was yelling at a pack of feral animals. He was so excited
when he came in the room he didn’t know who to yell at, but by the time
he left, all us paperboys knew our behavior wasn’t standard fare at the
Central. I suspect, too, the Messenger heard of our exploits from
the hotel manager and might have had second thoughts about their
ingenious marketing plan.
I personally didn’t really care about the circus. My goal was to win the
grand prize. My own Columbia bike, which I acquired from the Des
Moines Register and Tribune company after 52 weekly payments of $1,
was falling apart, so when the Messenger announced a new bicycle as the
grand prize, my mind started to work in overdrive, which in my case was
not always for the good.
At first I didn’t think I had much of a chance of winning the bike since
Rolfe didn’t have as many prospective new customers as places like Fort
Dodge or Humboldt, but when I learned that someone in a previous year
had won with only ten new customers … hmmmmmm. I figured that if a new
Schwinn Phantom cost $60, and if the weekly subscription rate for the
Messenger was 30 cents, that meant … hmmmmmm. Well, I’ve never claimed
to have the business savvy of a Warren Buffet, but suppose a few persons
were to sign on as new subscribers, but then after a couple weeks
decided the Messenger was, well, uh, it wasn’t all it was cracked
up to be. So with a little third-grade arithmetic, I figured there was a
Schwinn Phantom in my future.
Over the next few weeks, I started giving birth to phony Messenger
customers. I don’t recall their names, but to this day there are people
in Rolfe that never knew they subscribed to the Fort Dodge Messenger.
In the final analysis, I got five new bona fide ones, which I padded
with eight bogus ones, giving me a total of 13, which increased my
customers from 73 to 86. The whole thing was so ridiculously simple, the
silly people at the Messenger didn’t have the foggiest idea they
were in way over their heads.
I don’t remember if the award ceremony for handing out prizes for new
customers was before or after the circus, but I remember sitting in a
big tent with about a hundred other paperboys and some guy comes in
wheeling in a brand new Schwinn Phantom. Then another guy says something
to the effect that some kid is going to get something very special, but
then announced the fifth place winner had something like 15 new
customers. It struck me like a ton of bricks. Fifth place— 15 new
customers!? Not only was I not going to win the Schwinn Phantom, I
wasn’t even going to get a booby prize! I don’t remember how many
increases it took to get the bike, but it was something like 21, and I
do remember it went to a girl, and if I remember correctly, she was from
Boxholm. Boxholm, I thought, where the devil is that?
After a few minutes, I started to get over my disappointment when some
man on stage told us that if our new customers thought about stopping
the Messenger after the mandatory 10-week period, we should point
out benefits of a continued subscription. Ten weeks! The words "ten
weeks" was not lost on me. In my zeal to get new customers, I never read
the small print in the customer’s contract. I thought the customers
could stop their subscription any time they wanted—like next week! The
small print said something like a new customer got a couple weeks free,
after which they had to maintain their subscription for ten more weeks!
Aggggggggggggggggg. And I had eight phantom customers on the books, each
of which had to pony up 30 cents a week.
My cash flow for the next couple months was barely above water and my
mother kept asking why I always had all those extras. I told her the
Messenger often messed up and sent too many.
But the thing that’s really galled me for the past 60 years, is there’s
an old woman down in Boxholm with a beat-up bike in her garage, laughing
her head off and telling stories to her grandkids about how she
out-foxed every Messenger paperboy in Northwest Iowa.
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