I am honored to present a personal essay written by our classmate Rich Jones. I'm sure his reflections will touch all of you in some way, had me laughing and crying at the same time, sign of a great story. He promises more too & I'm holding him to it! AND I hope more of you will follow his lead! Our memories are golden, let's share them! TYOS Rich (That's my new acronym for when I want to thank someone but those 2 words just don't seem like enough, but perhaps Thank You on Steroids gets the point across succinctly!
Route
66 & Me
Rich
Jones
In
September 1959 U.S. Route 66 was still The Main Street of America,
The Mother Road, running from Chicago to Santa Monica, California.
If you didn’t want to battle the traffic passing through the city
of St. Louis, you took Route 66 Bypass, which ran through the center
of Kirkwood, my hometown. At a newspaper stand where Route 66
crossed the Missouri Pacific railroad tracks, I started my first job
selling the St. Louis Post-Dispatch after school. I was eleven years
old, just entering 7th
grade. The job allowed me to explore the business center of Kirkwood
on my own, without mediation or interpretation by teachers, preachers
or parents. What I learned over the next two years opened me up to a
world beyond Kirkwood.
Founded
in 1865, Kirkwood was a typical mostly white, mostly Republican
suburb of St. Louis where I was raised in a modest 20x30 foot
3-bedroom bungalow like millions of others built to accommodate the
growing families of returning GIs. Father, mother, older sister—an
ordinary family except that my mother worked full time as an office
manager of a small advertising firm. In elementary school, I brought
home above average grades, but “Rich doesn’t live up to his
potential,” the teachers reported on parents’ night, often adding
that I was “a disruptive influence in class.” And they were
right. I was an awkward, bratty kid who just didn’t seem to fit
in. If it were today, I probably would be given some
behavior-altering drug.
Mom
and Dad were leery at first when a friend recommended me as his
replacement at the corner newsstand. Paper boys were unsavory types
who would be a bad influence, they said. I persisted, arguing it
would be a good experience for me to earn some money on my own.
“Bobbie gets money babysitting, why can’t I do this?” The fact
that my father was out of work again may have persuaded my parents to
change their mind. I was elated. It was not just for the chance to
earn money. I dreaded staying at home after school. My mother was
always at work, my hard-to-please father would be waiting to pounce
on me for some real or imagined transgression, and my high school
sister would entertain herself by picking on me. She nicknamed me
“Crisco,” fat in the can. Always tense at home, uncomfortable in
school, I welcomed the opportunity to be someplace else.
My
first week on the job, I stood on the corner watching the cars whizz
past, waiting for the red light so I could grab the attention of
drivers while they sat fiddling with their radio or lighting up.
“Read all about it!” I cried out, mimicking the phrase I had
picked up from watching a newsboy hawking The Daily Planet in a
Superman episode. I held up the newspapers with the headline visible
to entice interest. I sold only one or two papers that way. I
delivered a dozen papers to the list of customers in nearby shops,
but ended up with at least 15 unsold papers. After a week of
disappointment, I began to roam farther from the stand, dropping into
shops along the 4-block business district that runs along Bypass 66,
AKA Lindbergh Boulevard [AKA Kirkwood Road]. I needed to enlist new customers. I would
walk in with the papers under my arm, tell them what the lead story
is and show them the front page headline and photo. While they
reached into their pocket or purse searching for a nickel, they would
ask, "How’re ya doin’ sonny? Whadja learn in school today?" It
found it easy to strike up a conversation with grown-ups. I’d
smile cheerfully, tell a joke or something about a TV show or movie I
had seen. Anything that might engage them. I felt a tiny thrill of
victory when I scored a new customer. They liked me! I was no
longer that nuisance at school or that bratty kid at home. I began
to feel more grown-up.
I
discovered things about the town and the people I met. In the beauty
salon the acrid smell of chemicals tickled my nose and made me wonder
how anyone could endure that all day. At the taxi dispatcher’s
office, I saw a framed photo on the wall of a soldier in dress
uniform, and listened to the dispatcher’s story about his brother,
the one who didn’t come back from the war. I found the tiny office
atop the control tower by the train station a place of refuge on cold
winter days. There a guy named Hank explained the signaling system
that controlled passing freight and passenger trains. When it rained
I would duck into the bookstore near my paper stand. I used
my earnings to buy my first books there: Carl Sandburg’s three
volume boxed paperback biography of Lincoln. The saleslady at the clothing store where I delivered a paper helped me pick out a pair of
leather gloves for my mother. On Christmas morning I burst with
pride when she opened it, exclaiming, “I bought them with my own
money! I hope they fit.” I did not mean for it to make her cry.
That
first year selling newspapers helped me at school. It was in
civics class that a teacher first encouraged me to think for myself.
When we walked into the classroom the first day of class, we read a
quotation on the blackboard that said, “Governments are instituted
among men….and when the government becomes destructive of those
ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.” The
teacher said, “Get out a pen and paper and comment.” We looked
at each other, puzzled. No teacher had ever asked us to think for
ourselves. Ten minutes later he asked if we knew the source of that
statement. No one raised a hand. None of us recognized that it was
from the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. He
made us think about what “citizenship” means.
I
began to really enjoy school for the first time. We talked about
current affairs several times every week. Sometimes the topics made
me want to read more about them in newspapers. At other times, I
felt I knew more than the other kids because of what I had already
been reading in the Post-Dispatch. I began to feel as smart as the
best students in the class. It gave me a sense of pride I don’t
remember having experienced before. I felt comfortable asking a lot
of questions, and teachers seemed to like my questions Most of the
time.
One
question stands out. The previous day’s newspaper headline had
read: KHRUSHCHEV VISITS IOWA FARM and the photo showed the Soviet
leader in an ill-fitting business suit holding a piglet in his arms.
It was an image so contrary to the usual stories about “communist
menace” that I mentioned it in class. “How could this
dumpy-looking grandfather figure be a threat?” I don’t
recall the teacher’s exact response but felt I had somehow violated
a strongly held tenet of Cold War patriotism. The fear of Soviet
communism would within a year intensify when Khrushchev planted
Soviet missiles in Cuba.
In
school or on the job, I absorbed stories about the election in 1960,
something called “Bay of Pigs” in Cuba, our first man in space,
lunch counter sit-ins across the South, a Nazi war criminal captured
in Argentina, a mysterious American spy plane shot down by “the
Russians,” and the construction of a wall in Berlin. “Read all
about it!” was my sales pitch, and it became my own mantra.
Newspapers extended my classroom.
I was promoted to the main paper stand a few blocks north where I could
earn twice as much. I looked forward to selling on Sunday, a bonus
day where I earned more than half the week’s profits. I got up at 6
o’clock, made a full breakfast, then biked to the paper stand
before 7 to catch the early church-goers. I would stay until noon to
catch the late crowd. Each paper carried thick news, business and
sports sections sometimes totaling three pounds. My early adolescent
body managed to lift the 25-pound bales dropped off in the morning.
Some customers would buy two papers, hand me a dollar, and drive off
with a nod before I could give them change. Beyond earning money, I
was learning my way around a kitchen, time management, selling
skills—all life habits that would serve me well in the future.
The
news stand was run by Sam Brick, the kindly old guy who had hired me
and would occasionally tip me an extra dollar or two. “Thanks.
What’s this for?” I would ask. “Yer doin’ good, kid. Keep
it up.” The stand itself was just an enclosed metal box that
protected the stack of newspapers from the elements, with a padlocked
compartment in the back where I left the day’s cash and Sam kept a
small supply of The Racing Form, an 8-page daily with news about
horse racing,
Sometimes
before he left for the day Sam would hand me an envelope that I was
to give to “Frank” who would drive by around 5:30. At other
times, “Bill” might swing by, lean across the passenger seat,
roll down the window and hand me an envelope with the instruction
“Give this to Sam,” and I would dutifully lock it up. This
happened often enough to make me ask Mike, one of the older paper
boys, “What’s up with the envelopes?” “Sam’s a bookie.
Din’chya know?” “No shit!” I blurted out, proud to show off
my grown-up language. Racetracks were illegal in Missouri. But not
across the river in Illinois where the racetracks were located.
Sam’s newsstand was a front for illicit betting, so I must be part
of his operation. “Are we in trouble if he’s ever caught?” I
asked Mike. “Nah, he’s been doing it for years. Cops probably
know all about it. Some of ‘em are probably Sam’s customers.”
My
learning the reality of Sam’s side business raised for me more
questions and lessons about adult life. Sam was kind to me. I liked
him. Should my new-found knowledge of his side business change my
opinion of him? I wondered, can you get away with doing illegal
stuff if you know the right people? If something is legal in
Illinois, can you be arrested for doing the same thing in Missouri
where it is not? And if it is illegal, does that then make it
immoral? If so, can it be moral there but not here? If so, what
makes something moral or not?
Not
long after that discovery I missed almost two months of Sunday papers
sales to attend the confirmation classes my parents made me go to,
even though they never went to church and claimed no specific
religious allegiance. I raised some of these questions about law and
morality with the young seminarian leading the class. In my youthful
impatience for an easy answer, I was probably not satisfied with his
responses. But the questions I raised about law and morality would
recur in a more concrete way just a few years later during the Viet
Nam War, and of course many times more in the decades to come.
I
can thank Krushchev for my most profitable, and most memorable
Sunday. In August, 1961 bold headlines broke the story of a wall
being erected in Berlin. The wall cut the city in half, divided
families, and sharply raised the temperature of the Cold War. The
Wall seemed abstract and far away until a few weeks later when we
were told at school that Mr. McMahon in math and Mr. Brunson in gym
would be replaced for the rest of the semester. Their Army Reserve
units were being mobilized by President Kennedy to confront the
Soviet threat to Berlin.
The
following Sunday I was stacking the heavy Sunday papers in advance of
the usual morning rush. As the sun has made its way above the trees,
chasing away the October morning chill, my ears picked up a low
rumbling in the distance. “It can’t be semis,” I thought.
“There’s never more than a few passing by on Sunday mornings.”
I gazed north towards the sound and detected a line of dark green
vehicles creeping towards the center of town heading right down Route
66 towards my newspaper stand. It was an Army convoy—troop
carriers, jeeps, and mobile cannons—that stretched back at least
half a mile. I had heard the whine of jet fighters streaking
overhead on weekends when the Reserves were in training. But I had
never seen the Army up close like this, nor heard their relentless
grumble so close. Right here through the heart of Kirkwood.
The
convoy came to a halt in front of me, the cacophony of grinding
diesel engines now gurgling in idle as the convoy waited for the
stoplight at Adams Avenue to turn green. “Where’re you headed?”
I shouted up to a soldier in the troop carrier. “Fort Leonard
Wood,” about 130 miles to the southwest down Route 66. Another
soldier shouted down “Hey kid! Er’ them papers fer sale?” “You
bet!” I shouted back. Whenever the convey halted at the stoplight,
soldiers began flinging down quarters and dollar bills as I passed up
one of the heavy Sunday editions after another as fast as I could. I
had just enough time before the light changed to hand up three, four
or five papers at a time. No one asked for change, not even for a
fiver. Every 90 seconds the convoy came to a halt right in front of
me. I sold out by 9 o’clock with more than $25 of profit in my
pocket.
The
drama of the passing convoy made events in the world that I had only
read about in the papers seem real. Khrushchev, no longer the
grandfatherly figure in Iowa, built the threatening Wall. Kennedy
mobilized the Army reserves. These reserves rolled right by me, I
talked with them, sold papers to them. and they moved on to Fort
Leonard Wood. I saw how their lives were disrupted by the
mobilization. I wondered what lay ahead for them. I didn’t know
any of them, but they made me see that what happens “out there”
beyond Kirkwood can have real consequences.
Just
four years later—a quarter of a lifetime for a teenager but a blip
for retiree—my classmates and I would learn just how real those
consequences would be for us. In 1965 the next president launched a
war and called up not just reserves, but eventually young men my age
to fight a hot war much farther away than Berlin: Viet Nam. Little
did I know then that my abstract question about law and moral
relativity asked so innocently in confirmation class would so soon
become a personal question of life and death choices for me and
millions of other charter members of the Baby Boom generation.
I
returned to Kirkwood to attend my 50th
high school reunion, my first time back in thirty-five years. I was
glad to see the small house where I grew up still there virtually
unchanged but now dwarfed by the mini-McMansion next door. Trees I
had climbed were now gone. My favorite sledding hill in the park
just a half block from my childhood home on West Madison was replaced
by the Kirkwood Ice Arena. A bank parking lot now fills the space
where Sam’s newsstand once stood. And U.S. Bypass 66 had been
demoted. It lost its federal Route 66 title in 1985, a victim of the
Interstate Highway System. But Kirkwood still proudly calls it
“Historic Route 66,” a name that evokes its role as the highway
to a new life for millions of Americans.
That
name comforts me. It remains part of my history too. At first, the
job was about earning money and a chance to venture away from home.
By the time I entered high school, I was no longer that
under-performing, annoying brat. I was placed in fast track classes
and became the first one in my family to graduate from college. I’ve
been happily married for fifty-six years with two children, two
grandchildren and enjoyed fulfilling careers in academia,
international finance, and university fund raising. My road to the
adult world began on Route 66.
Once you finish reading and as you are thinking about this, why not extend your Route 66 thoughts, go here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WHKwUN7nss to watch and listen to a duo playing four hand piano - what else would I post here, of course "Route 66" - the musicians live across the street from us and travel the world most of the year performing their amazing four-hand music! Sometimes when we are home we can hear them practicing when windows are open and the weather is great! ENJOY a bit more Route 66 as you digest Rich's great story!
