Early Years

My commenter (LL) on my previous post said when she was young, she made 50 cents per hour. That reminded me of my first paying job: newspaper delivery. I was 13 when I started that job.

Newspapers today are a shadow of what they used to be. Newpapers were thick and heavy. I had about 80 to 100 weekly papers and about 120 Sunday papers. I delivered the weekly papers by rolling them up and then loading them into the basket on my bike. I biked down all the streets on my route, delivering papers to both sides of the street. I was bitten by dogs three times. On Thursday afternoon, I spent several hours collecting money from the first half of my route, and on Friday afternoon I collected from the second half of my route. I spent several hours each day just collecting. On Saturday morning, I would go over the route again and try to collect from the homes where no one was at home on Thursday or Friday. 

The Sunday papers were so thick and heavy that it was impractical for me to deliver them by bicycle. So my father got up early every Sunday and we would load the bundles of newpapers into the trunk of his Buick Electra, and we would begin delivery. I would grab a newpaper and run to the first house and throw it on the porch, then run back to the Buick and grab another paper and deliver it to the other side of the street. Back and forth I ran, for several miles, delivering papers from the Buick's trunk to the customer's porch. 

It was a hard job, especially when the weather was bitterly cold. And how much money did I make from this job? After paying for the newspapers, I cleared about seven dollars per week. That's right - a dollar per day for working at least 30 hours per week. 

During the weekdays, I always stopped at my grandmother's house on the way home. She would make me a big stack of pancakes, with butter and syrup, of course. I could eat much more then than I can eat now, because I was always on the go. And being young, my metabolism was no doubt higher than today.

One morning as I was leaving in darkness, I saw a dark spot in the yard. I went over to it and saw that it was a hole. I returned to the house and went to my parents' bedroom.

Me: "Dad, there's a big hole in the front yard. It's about three feet across."

Dad: "Get the flashlight and see how deep it is."

So I went outside with the flashlight. The hole was lined with brick and was about 12 feet deep. It was clearly the remains of a well. I returned to the house and told my father the bad news. That was the end of his night's sleep. From somewhere, my father acquired the side of a large crate and covered the well with it. Later that day, a dump truck arrived and filled the hole with sand.

After my parents passed away, I moved back into that house. The well, filled with sand and soil, is still in the front yard. Nuria uses it as a flower garden. I put bricks around the perimeter of the flower garden, and Nuria planted decorative solar-powered lights among the bricks.

But where did the well come from? My neighborhood was part of a plantation in the Civil War era, and the plantation may even have been much older than the Civil War. The eastern half of Virginia is full of history, and history contains its own surprises.