Inside his art deco 1956 Chrysler Corp. car, Jimmy follows a cold blond down Mason, California, Cushman, Sacramento, Taylor, Clay, Mason, Washington, and Powell Streets. To arrive at Lombard Street, supposedly the most crooked street on Earth.

 

Some interesting scenes there Fielder.

When I was in the 7th or 8th grade I delivered the Shopping News on Lombard Street between Hyde and Columbus.  I started at Hyde Street and went down the south side of Lombard on the crookedest block in the world and delivered to every house until I got to Stockton street.  There I crossed Lombard and started up the hill ending up delivering papers on the north side of the crookedest block in the world.

The Shopping News was a free throwaway paper advertising the major stores in San Francisco.  It was published on Wednesdays and Saturdays so I worked two days a week.

I wrote a story about paper routes in my collection of boyhood stories for my grandchildren to read.

Paper Routes

At some time or another most young boys get a paper route.  I had three.  Actually I had two paper routes and a corner at which I sold papers.

Paper routes for city news papers can be pretty discouraging.  In addition to delivering the paper every afternoon (or morning, as the case may be), you must also collect money from the subscribers.
At the end of the month there will be an envelope in you stack of papers.  In it will be a bill for all the papers you delivered that month, and a receipt pad for collecting money.

For the next two weeks you will have to go to all of your subscribers and collect money.

Many will not be home.  Others won't have money and ask you to come back another evening.  A few wrote bad checks, especially if they're going to move soon.  Some may have already moved, without notifying you, and the new tenant of the apartment, who gladly picked up the paper you left at the door every afternoon, won't pay you because they did not order the paper in the first place.   Paper route profits are seldom what they are advertised to be.  I know some boys who were lucky to break even.  Some even had to ask their parent's for money to pay for the papers.  As a result there is a high turnover in the paper route business.

Selling papers on a street corner was much better.  You only paid for the papers you sold, and returned the unsold ones to the route boss at the end of the day.  Corners were plums.  They were hard to get.  Usually you had to know a boy who already had a corner, and take it over when he quit.

I sold the Examiner and the Call Bulletin on the corner of Polk and Clay for several months.  Most of my customers were regulars who would buy a paper on their way home from work in the evening.  Many of them would give me a tip.  It surprised me how much more generous people who paid cash were than those who were billed by the month.

That corner was my first insight into human nature.  I began noticing how different people were.  How many different ways people would buy a paper.  Some would come to you politely ask for a paper.  Others would yell at you at  make you run across the street or up the block to sell them a paper.  There were the happy faces and the frowny faces, and they never seemed to change.

One afternoon while Lee was keeping me company on the corner, I put a penny on the sidewalk to see how long it would take for someone to pick it up.  Most people just walked by without noticing it.  Others would point it out to me and say, "Hey kid, is this yours?"  Others would stop, move it around with their toe, and walk on.  

Finally a young woman on crutches came by.  She stopped and look at it.  She asked me if I had dropped it.  I told her it wasn't mine.  Then she put both crutches under one arm and slowly bent over and picked the penny up.  She looked at me and smiled.  "My lucky day!" she said as she walked away.

The best job of all was a Shopping News route.

The Shopping News was an advertising paper that came out on Wednesdays and Saturdays.  It was full of ads from the major department stores in San Francisco and it was delivered free to every house in the city.
This was a route that didn't require collections.  You were paid two dollars and twenty five cents a week to deliver the papers.  To get such a route you had to be recommended by a boy who already had one, and then you were put on a waiting list.  I had a recommendation and had been on the waiting list for so long I had forgotten about it.

Then one morning at recess the classmate who recommended me said his route boss had a route for me.  I was to see him that afternoon.

I met the route boss after school.  He signed me up to start the following Saturday.

My route was along Lombard Street, from Hyde to Columbus.  Three and a half blocks on one of the steepest hills in the city.  It included the now famous crookedest street in the world, that block of 'S' turns that winds down Lombard between Hyde Street and Leavenworth.

I would pick up my papers at the top of the hill, fill up my bag, and walk down the hill on one side of the street.  At Columbus I'd cross over and deliver the rest of them going up the hill.
I did this every Wednesday afternoon and Saturday morning for the rest of the school year.  When summer vacation started, and Lee and I would be going to Salinas.  The route was turned over to another of my classmates, a boy I had recommended to the route boss.

It was at another place in another world.  God!  I miss it!  Thanks, Fielder, for the memories.

Noel

After I think 30 years in the marine corps, Huel Howser retired and started filming TV spots about California for America's Public Broadcasting Stations.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huell_Howser