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Dayton Memories >
Dayton Shopping News
Dayton Shopping News
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rdebross
37 posts
Jan 27, 2013
8:12 AM
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Delivering the Dayton Shopping News was really my first job and I can say that it was the worst one I ever had. My mother thought delivering this weekly ad rag around 1956 or so would be great job training and a chance for some of her kids to get a little pocket money. I thought that it was near slave labor and stand by that to this day. Each route paid a dollar and consisted of hundreds of deliveries with strict rules. Each paper had to be rolled and rubber banded. Delivery had to be to the door knob and never allowed for walking across a lawn to the next house. We started out as substitute carriers in the summer. One of the sub routes included the houses along Linden Avenue hill (near intersections with Xenia Ave. and Lorain Ave.) Some of these houses included about twenty steps up from the street to the bottom of the front porch. Up and down each long flight of steps; no walking across the lawns between houses. All this in the summer heat lugging a wagon and bags of papers uphill. Thank heaven that the city provided a drinking fountain at the corner of Linden and Santa Cruz. Then when we got home and recovered a little, the delivery supervisor would show up at the door and complain that we didn't door knob some of the papers. If I meet up with that guy in the hereafter, I'm gonna beat on him.
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Perry401
115 posts
Jan 30, 2013
3:17 PM
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I had a Dayton Daily News route and it wasn't much better -- except we got paid a lot better The average paper route was 50-100 customers. We delivered 7 days a week with Evening papers Monday thru Saturday and a Morning Paper on Sunday. (Journal Hearld was only 6 days a week, all mornings). We got paid 2 cents per daily paper delivered and 12-1/2 cents for each Sunday paper delivered. Of course the Sunday papers were much thicker and heavyier than quite a few daily papers. So if you had 100 customers who all got papers every day, you made $12.00 for the daily paper delivery and $12.50 for the Sunday paper delivery, or a total of $24.50 per week -- not bad for a kid in 5th to 8th grade.
This of course assumed you got paid by everyone. There always were customers who would say "come back tomorrow" and when you wen back they would say "I paid you yesterday (or "my Husband said he already paid you") The newspaper had a Datyon police officer who worked with them who would go out with the newspaper boy to a customer who continuously refused to pay and simply having a cop there made the slackers come clean and pay -- but then the usually canceled their subscriptions (who needs this type of customer anyway we were told).
We were not supposed to walk across the grass, etc. but were supposed to put the paper in the place the customer wanted -- some wanted it between their screen door and passage door. Some wanted it in their mailbox. Some wanted it in a Milk Box. Some wanted it under the rubber door mat. There seemed to be as many places people wanted their papers as there were people and if they couldn't find it where they expected it they would dock you with a "service error" and you were expected to go out as late as 4 hours after you picked up the papers to take a second paper to the complaint holder. One of the pluses was that you sometimes were ask by people driving by or at bus stops or whatever if they could buy a paper and if you sold them a paper directly, you made a full 5 cents instead of just 2 cents. We soon learned where we could unload a couple of extra papers each day.
One of my customers was a bar and I could always sell an extra paper or two to their customers, and the bartender also alway got me a coke for free. I delivered to a UDF store and the manager always gave me some ice cream treat, and I delivered to a florist and they would often give me a bunch of flowers that had not sold and were still pretty good looking but they would just throw out when they closed. My mom never lacked for fresh cut flowers, some quite exotic.
One of the bad things was most people paid in change and you had to spend hours counting your change and putting in in paper rolls to take to pay for the papers you sold each week. One of the good things was that if you kept your eyes opened, you could snatch some collectable coins, and this was during the time when there still were a lot of silver coins around that you could sell for many times face value.
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rdebross
46 posts
Feb 02, 2013
4:45 PM
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dhoertt - down the sewers? Now that explains all the street flooding in east Dayton.
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olds88
46 posts
Feb 03, 2013
11:52 AM
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Remember shopping news. Most got dumped over RR bridge on patterson rd.They were free to customers and most did not want them any way.
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gris66
93 posts
Feb 05, 2013
12:01 PM
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My cousin and I had shopping news routes in Dayton View. As I remember, we'd get about 500 papers to deliver.
My cousin soon got tired of delivering them and didn't for a few weeks. He then discovered who complained (only a few) and who didn't (most people). In order to stay out of trouble but still get paid, he would deliver only to the handful that complained. Soon his basement and garaged were filled with papers. He could no longer give his dad the excuse that they were "extras".
So we tried to burn them in that back alley burn can. When it was clear that the rising red-hot paper ashes might set a few garage roofs on fire, we stopped that disposal method.
He then went the route dhoertt suggested... down the sewers. That was my cousin's undoing. It did exactly what rdebross said. It clogged the sewers and backed up the water. The street department came out and my cousin's delivery route came to and end... and his end came in contact with my uncle's belt.
I missed those great days of mischief.
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