With paper routes came the necessary need to "build your route." Well, this meant more customers, right? In Rockford, the Chicago Daily News had periodic sales contests for various items based on number of new customers during a period of time. In so doing, your District Manager would pick you and a few other carriers up after dinner and escort you to different parts of town- or so you hoped was still Rockford. Unfortunately, this wasn't voluntary as we know it today. I refer to it more as conscription. There were parts of town that were downright scary to a 9 year old. Hey, our own neighborhood was a bit iffy after 8PM!
We canvassed in teams of two. One taking one side of the street and the other.. you get the idea. From 6PM to 9PM we went house to house until we finished an area. Then, the manager would return and take us to another street. Oh, joy, another dark street housing complete strangers that could have knives and guns ready when a kid comes up the walk.
On weekends, you went solo in your own route area. Well, patience pays off. One night, our manager called us all in to his office ( dad had to take me). The "Big Kahuna" of all Chicago Daily News contests was here: an all expense trip to Puerto Rico for 50 lucky Chicago Daily News carriers in a 3 state competition. For 3 months, I sold my butt off every night and weekends. No one in church, school and the neighborhood was untouched. In fact, our close neighbors, Connie and Virginia had multiple subscriptions as did the pastor and many others- maybe even RJ and DJ- who COULD read by that time. I tried multiple sales techniques: aggressive, sensitive and pathetic. Pathetic was selling and pretending you weren't sure what you were selling, but trying really hard. Hey, it worked in a couple of instances!
Every week, the paper listed the carrier standings across all 3 states. Everyone watched it closely to see where we stood against some pretty tough competition in Indiana. By the end, I finished 10th and the rest is kinda legendary. What happens to a 10 year old in Puerto Rico stays in Puerto Rico, unless you take a boatload of slides. More on that later..... during the Travels Segment blog
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