{"id":30047,"date":"2025-04-03T08:35:17","date_gmt":"2025-04-03T12:35:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/?p=30047"},"modified":"2025-04-04T14:23:11","modified_gmt":"2025-04-04T18:23:11","slug":"the-witch-of-42nd-street","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/the-witch-of-42nd-street\/","title":{"rendered":"The Witch of 42nd Street"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Witch of 42nd Street<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The world has changed so much since I was a kid. I suppose every generation has said that. My grandfather saw the first cars, the first airplanes, the first radios, the first telephones, the first TVs, and the first color TVs, and he lived long enough to see a man set foot on the moon. That\u2019s a long, long way from Kitty Hawk.<\/span><\/p>\n

My life has seen a similar number of amazing events, the internet being one of the most impactful. But newer doesn\u2019t always mean better. I often find myself nostalgically looking back on my childhood. It seems to me that the world\u2019s gotten far too complicated and a bit too mean for me.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to tell you the story of a woman who lived a couple of blocks away from my grandparent\u2019s house\u00a0 \u2013 a house where I spent most of my summers and weekends.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know her real name. It was a foreign last name that no ethnocentric 12-year-old could pronounce.<\/span><\/p>\n

My best friend at that time was Richard. He was a poor kid from the other side of the tracks, which is to say he lived about a block away from my grandparents.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, my grandparents weren\u2019t wealthy, but my grandfather bought a new Ford every year. This made him wealthy in my youthful eyes. I can still remember him taking me car shopping with him every autumn. I don\u2019t know why he shopped, he always bought Fords.<\/span><\/p>\n

Anyway, Richard lived in a very ramshackle house. The paint was peeling, the garage door rotting, and the interior of the house was \u2013 to be kind \u2013 cruddy. But 12-year-old boys don\u2019t notice crud or dirt. In those days, a friend was a friend, and friends stuck together.<\/span><\/p>\n

And I was always careful not to mention Richard\u2019s filthy house or nutty family to my grandmother, or she would never have allowed me to be friends with him, much less let me go to his house.\u00a0 My grandmother was loving but stern.<\/span><\/p>\n

Not to get off the track here, but when I say crazy family, I mean CRAZY family. Richard had an uncle that everyone \u2013 even us kids \u2013 called \u201cUncle Stud\u201d. I had no idea what a stud was when I was 12. So I thought nothing of it. Uncle Stud was blind and used a white cane to get around. He would visit several times every summer.<\/span><\/p>\n

I remember he often would tell us dirty jokes that Richard and I didn\u2019t understand \u2013 there was no internet then. No smartphones. No sexting. No digital pics. The best us boys had back in those days was the National Geographic magazine, which sometimes featured pictures of scantily clad, long-necked ladies from the jungles of Borneo\u2014any port in the storm.<\/span><\/p>\n

Aside from the risque jokes Uncle Stud told us \u2013 he was an amusing sort of guy. I always looked forward to seeing him and listening to his tales \u2013 and his dirty jokes \u2013 that I didn\u2019t understand.<\/span><\/p>\n

Anyway\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

Back in those days, newspapers were a big deal. There were morning papers and afternoon papers. In my town, the afternoon paper was called the Sandusky Register. Back in those halcyon days, paper boys delivered the newspapers house-to-house, sometimes on foot, but most often, they rode bicycles. <\/span><\/p>\n

Tossing newspapers, painstakingly folded into rectangles, onto people\u2019s doorsteps was quite a skill. Most of these paperboys or papergirls could toss a folded newspaper 20 or 30 feet and put it on the porch\u2013 at worst \u2013 or on the porch steps if you were good \u2013 all while speeding by on a bicycle.<\/span><\/p>\n

I was never a paperboy, but Richard was.\u00a0 My grandfather made sure I never wanted for anything and gave me an allowance. Richard was not so lucky.\u00a0 His family was very poor. So, if he wanted money, he had to earn it. And he earned from his paper route.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, paper routes require a kid to be responsible, so when Richard delivered newspapers, he couldn\u2019t hang out (as we say today) with me.\u00a0 Luckily, delivering the newspapers to the customers on his route only took about an hour. But you know, when you\u2019re 12, an hour can seem awfully long. An hour seems like a few minutes now.<\/span><\/p>\n

Delivering papers didn\u2019t take nearly as long as collecting. Collecting was a whole other animal. Every week, Richard had to go to each of his customers\u2019 homes and collect what was due for the newspapers he delivered that week. Walking from house to house in an area the size of four city blocks takes time.<\/span><\/p>\n

Richard collected on Saturdays. Because I didn\u2019t want to spend a whole afternoon without my friend, I often went collecting with him. Looking back, we must have looked kind of quaint\u2014two buddies spending time together\u2026 collecting money from newspaper customers.<\/span><\/p>\n

You may not believe this, but collecting is a challenge. Because, even in those days, the biggest problems in the newspaper route collection business were that:<\/span><\/p>\n