Extra Jobs

With 4 daughters, money was always tight. Joyce was making a little money from the Mom’s Day Out program at church, and that helped.  I worked at AT&T on the night shift because it paid 10% more than the day shift.  

One of the ways we made extra money was delivering The Weekly Shopping News.  The Weekly Shopping News was a local newspaper that contained ads for local businesses, and a minimal amount of news. 

I would pick up the papers in wrapped bundles of 250 papers per bundle.  I would bring them back to our house and we would start folding the papers for delivery. To make the papers throwable, we had to fold them in thirds and then wrap a rubber band around it. We then put the papers in boxes we had gotten from the grocery store that Bananas had been delivered in. 

If the next day was supposed to be rainy, we had to slide the papers into plastic sleeves and deliver them that way.  It was boring, tedious work, and usually we recruited the kids to help.  

I know they hated it, so I would put on movies in the den for them to watch while we worked as a family. We watched a lot of Ernest movies. 

There was a comedian who played Ernest and he got into different types of trouble in each movie. A couple of titles were Ernest goes to Camp, and Ernest goes to Jail. 

By the end of the night, we smelled like printing ink, and our hands were black from handling the papers. About the only thing that would clean the ink from our hands was Lava soap. Lava was a soap bar that contained pumice that scrubbed off the ink. Along with the ink some skin was lost. Good Times, Hey Kids?

After the papers were stacked into the banana boxes, we would load our Ford F-150 van, the kids would head to bed, and Joyce and I would set off to deliver the papers.  I think it took 3 or so hours to deliver them.  For all this work, we earned a staggering $100 per week.  Out of those proceeds, we had to pay for our gas, which usually took 25 to 30 dollars.

The way we got involved in delivering the papers was through Jimmy and Sherry Hill.  Jimmy and Sherry had one son Jason.  Jason was in the same class at school as Kelly and they became besties.  They even had sleepovers at Jason’s because Jason had bunk beds.  I guess they were 7 or 8 at the time.

More on them in the next post…