A day or two after I telephoned the now-defunct Indianapolis Times' office, Mr. Evans, a very friendly white fellow in his mid-twenties, who was responsible for training and supervising the teenagers who delivered the newspaper to homes in my neighborhood each day, arrived at my family's rented portion of the duplex house in the afternoon, after 3:30. Only a few years after graduating from the all-male student-bodied (and still all-male student-bodied in 21st-century) Wabash College in Charlottesville, Indiana, Mr. Evans had gotten married in his early 20's; and in early 1963 was now responsible for supporting both his wife and their newly-born child.
Mr. Evans's friendly and warm Midwestern-accented personality seemed much more genuinely friendly than the personalities you'd tend to find in most New York City white men of his age with similar jobs on the East Coast, who tended to relate in a more gruff and impatient way to people they worked with in the 1950's and early 1960's. And besides relating to me in a very and friendly way, Mr. Evans also seemed to enjoy conversing for awhile in a non-sexist but warm and friendly way with my mother; before he, afterwards, led me outside and into his car, to show me how I should go about picking up my bundle of Indianapolis Times newspapers that the firm's newspaper delivery truck dropped off at the corner of College Avenue and North 52nd Street each afternoon and before dawn on Sunday mornings.
In her early 40's at this time, still considered very pretty and physically attractive by most men she encountered and, having grown up in Chicago, also possessing both a Midwestern accent and a friendly personality, my mother was probably someone whom Mr. Evans found both pleasant and interesting to converse with for awhile during his workday; and my mother seemed to also enjoy conversing for awhile with the younger man, since he was the type of man in his 20's who was able to converse with an older married woman he found attractive without making her feel uncomfortable and sexually harassed, or that he was flirting with her in an inappropriate way.
Besides driving me, on the first weekday afternoon we met, up and down College Avenue, Carrollton Avenue, Guilford Avenue and Winthrop Avenue, between North 49th Street and North 52nd Street (and across 49th, 50th, 51st and 52nd streets between these four avenues), and pointing out the houses on whose front porches I was to deliver the Indianapolis Times newspapers to each afternoon, Mr. Evans also drove me around on my newspaper route two other times.
The second time Mr. Evans drove me around in his car was when he showed me how to collect the weekly newspaper subscription payments from the folks to whom I delivered the newspapers on my route. And the third time Mr. Evans drove me around in his car was, before dawn, on the first early Sunday morning that I delivered the Sunday morning edition of the Indianapolis Times.
Many decades later, my most vivid memory of being driven around by Mr. Evans during my time as a newspaper delivery boy is of that initial Sunday morning time in Mr. Evans's car. For most of the hour that it took to deliver the Sunday newspapers to the homes of the 60 or so customers on my route, Mr. Evans's car was the only vehicle that was being driven on the completely deserted streets; and I was the only person walking on the street in the neighborhood during that whole hour I took copies of the newspaper in and out of Mr. Evans's car and dropped the newspapers in front of the subscribers' homes.
In the car during the hour, Mr. Evans kept the car radio on to make the time for him go by faster, while I went in and out of the car or while he drove me near the next house delivery destination on my newspaper route. And I can recall that the two pop hit songs that were played most during that morning in early 1963 were Steve Lawrence's 45 rpm vinyl recording of "Go Away Little Girl" and Peter Paul and Mary's recording of "Puff The Magic Dragon," in which Peter Yarrow's voice sung the lead on the song he had written.
But if anyone had said to me in early 1963 that, by the end of the decade, I would be writing the kind of protest folk songs, topical folk songs and love songs that Peter, Paul and Mary were recording and singing in the early 1960's, I would have looked at that person in disbelief. Although I played the tenor saxophone in early 1963, I had not yet developed any interest in learning how play the guitar. Nor had I yet discovered that I possessed any ability to create original folk song melodies and original protest folk song, topical folk song and love song lyrics similar to the kind of folk songs that Peter, Paul and Mary were then singing.
In early 1963, I still assumed that I would likely just spend my life just working as either a non-academic historian, a high school history teacher, some kind of newspaper journalist or some kind of writer of fictional novels someday; and the notion that I would end up spending so much of my leisure time during my life writing original folk songs, myself, had never ever crossed my mind.
After Mr. Evans quickly saw that I was a rapid learner, who could be relied on to both deliver the Indianapolis Times each day in a timely fashion and collect the money from the newspaper subscribers on my route with no problems, I did not have much more personal contact with him during the first 6 months of 1963, when I was a newspaper delivery boy in the second term of my sophomore year in high school. I no longer recall what the procedure was for me to transfer the portion of money each week that I collected which was due the Indianapolis Times to Mr. Evans; or how I informed Mr. Evans whether or not I needed more or less newspapers to be dropped of in the following week for my newspaper route.
It could be that he came by in his car while I was delivering the newspapers at an arranged regular late afternoon time on Thursday or Friday to quickly pick up the money I collected and find out if there were any changes in the number of newspapers I required for the following week. Or it could be that I just telephoned him at the Indianapolis Times office each week and mailed him a check equal to the percentage of what I had collected which the Indianapolis Times took, after I deducted my weekly salary and tips from the money I had collected.
During the six months I worked as a newspaper delivery boy in my neighborhood, 7 days a week, I used my bicycle while making deliveries by myself, rather than just delivering the newspapers while on foot. Filling up a newspaper delivery sac that draped over the rear of my bicycle and being able to get the newspapers onto the front porch and/or front doors of some houses by just heaving the folded-up newspapers, while still on my bicycle, was a much quicker way of getting done with my day's delivery task than delivering the newspapers by foot.
Over 50 years later, I can only recall the faces of just a few of the newspaper subscribers I collected from, because collecting money from newspaper subscribers on my route each week was like going around to houses or apartments in your neighborhood as a child on Halloween and saying "Trick or treat." You usually just spoke to the person who answered the door that you collected subcription money from for only a minute; and in some cases, if the subscriber paid you by the month for 4 weeks of deliveries, you might only see that subscriber for 6 minutes during the whole 6 months you delivered newspapers to that subscriber.
What I do recall is speaking to a white housewife, by the front door of a house on Carrollton Avenue, who seemed to be in her late 40's, who found it interesting that I had just moved to the neighborhood from New York City; since she, her husband and he daughter, who was in high school like I was, had just recently moved into the neighborhood from Cleveland, Ohio. In retrospect, I think she also spent some time conversing with me because she wanted to determine whether or not I might be the type of neighborhood high school guy her daughter might be interested in getting to know. But since I can't recall ever bumping into her daughter in school or in the neighborhood when I lived in Indianapolis, I don't know what was her final determination about me in early 1963.
I also recall a brief chat I had through the front doorway of a house on College Avenue, while making a collection, with an elderly white woman, who seemed to be in her late 60's, named Mrs. Schmidt, as well as collecting from a young married white woman, who seemed to be in her 20's, who was breastfeeding her newly arrived baby; and who lived with her husband and child in a small cottage in the backyard of the house that was adjacent to Winthrop Avenue. But that's all I can now remember of which people I delivered the Indianapolis Times to during the first 6 months of 1963. (end of part 24)
