Black History Month....

I was noticing the other day that February is Black History Month.  When I think of Black History, I think of the formative years when I was growing up and my relationship with some African Americans.  I (like many of you) remember the old State Theater.  I never saw a lot of Blacks in there because most were so dirt poor they couldn't afford to go.  Elwood Pendleton always managed to scrape up a quarter or two from time to time and he'd show up down there.  Sometimes there were a couple more but they were older than I was so I didn't really get to know them.  I remember Blacks (they were called "Coloreds" in those days) had to sit up in the balcony.  Even then, it seemed strange to me that I could go and sit up there with Elwood but he couldn't come downstairs and sit with me.  Actually, I sort of thought he was lucky because I thought the seats up there were better than the ones downstairs.  Old "Jimmy" never came up there and shined his flashlight in your face and told you to stay in your seat.  I can't remember if Blacks had their own restroom up there or not, but I'll bet they did..  I'm not sure whether they could purchase "goodies" from the concession stand but I doubt they could.  None of them I knew had money to "squander" on luxuries like that.  Usually, I'd get a box of Milk Duds and we'd share them.  I got a quarter a week allowance and you could get into the movie for fifteen cents.  On Saturdays, the matinee would last all day.  You could see a cartoon (sometimes they had an event called "cartoon carnival" where you'd see five or six of them), a "serial" called "Captain Marvel," (remember "Shazaam") and a full length movie ("House on the Haunted Hill" was my favorite).

A few years later my brother and I shared a Messenger-Inquirer daily & Sunday paper route.  It was the biggest route in town at the time so we had to split it in half to get the papers delivered before dark.  They delivered the papers to us in front of the old Bus Station across from First Methodist Church, except on Sundays when they delivered them behind the post office.  We got out of school around 2:30 and started our route by 3 p.m.  In the winter, it began to get dark around 4:30 so we had to deliver 110 papers in about an hour and a half.  We'd leave the bus station and he'd take the right hand side of Second Street (heading North) and I'd take the left.  When we got to Reynolds Street, I'd peel off to the left get 4 or 5 houses on Reynolds, get 4 or 5 more on Reservoir (heading West) and take what is now the Eagles Club driveway (the Eagles Club was Troy Laundry in those days) and descend into the black section of town.  I delivered to John Jagoe, James Harrison, and several others on that street.  I would then cross the railroad tracks over to First Street.  This usually involved going under railroad cars parked on the tracks.  From there I got most of the houses on First Street and just past Ebenezer Baptist Church, I would turn left on Pendleton.  At the railroad tracks (again), Don Hawkins was waiting for me.  There were four or five houses on Railroad Street (to the left) and Warren and Annie Bard lived further down Pendleton in a house to themselves.  I would give Don a dime a day to deliver these "out of the way" papers for me.  While he went to the left on Railroad Ave., I would go right.  You have to remember that back then, most of these roads (that are paved today) were nothing more than dirt paths back then.  I would proceed down Railroad St., and after I delivered Myrtle Collins paper (she was in the last house back there), I would cross the railroad tracks again and deliver to Marshall "Slim" Petty.  "Slim" had a dog that used to hide under his porch and just when I thought he wasn't around, he'd run out from under it and "attack" my paper bag.  He never threatened to bite me, he just had some phobia against paper bags.  From "Slim's" I'd cut through his yard back to First Street and on to Pleas Walker's house.  Pleas had one of the nicest homes in that neighborhood because he had gainful employment.  He was the custodian at Central City High School for years.

My route would then take me down First Street (both sides), up Newman (where Mamie Dykes, a super nice lady) and her family lived, back to First Street to Whitmer (back across the railroad tracks), back to Railroad Street (about 10 houses up there), back to Whitmer and past Turley's Transfer to Second St.  If everything went well, my Brother and I would "hook up" there about the same time (around 4 p.m.).  We'd then continue down Second St. (one on each side), turn up Park Street, and head for home (we lived on Park Street).

We collected on Saturdays.  Papers were thirty-five cents a week and we had one hundred ten customers.  If everybody paid us each week (sometimes it would take two or three trips to collect from certain customers), we made a dime a paper.  This was $11.00 and we split $5.50 each.  I paid Don Hawkins seventy cents to deliver the out of the way papers, so I netted $4.80 for my part.  It was enough to buy me a bicycle, a BB gun and a season ticket to the swimming pool.

I have to say that the two or three years I delivered papers in the black section of town, I never felt threatened (except occasionally by "Slim's" dog) and everyone treated me with kindness.  I was probably about ten years old and adults always had a kind word to say to me.  Many of these people were probably the poorest in town (although I didn't know that at the time) and I'm sure thirty-five cents a week came pretty hard to them, but, to my memory, no one ever beat me out of a dime.

When the schools integrated in 1964, I was a senior in high school.   We had some super nice blacks join us and I really wish they had done it earlier so I could have gotten to know some of them better.  I see a few of them from time to time and a couple of them have died.  Some have moved away to larger cities.  All were nice people. 

Today when I see Barack Obama running for the most powerful position in the world or when I see Oprah Winfrey listed as one of the top five most powerful women in the world, I can't help but wonder who their paper boy was.