Delivering newspapers on a bicycle didn’t last long

It has now been more than 57 years since God put me in the newspaper business. The year was 1964 when a call came from Frank Hilderman asking me to take the publisher’s job at the Manchester Mercury. Four years later, my wife and I formed Tri-County Newspapers, Inc. with the purchase of four small weekly newspapers surrounding Manchester.

My first real newspaper job was at the Mercury where I worked as bookkeeper and advertising manager for about a year and a half. Ads were sold on Mondays and Tuesdays and bookkeeping was done the rest of the week. All total, I worked for Mr. Hilderman for five and a half years but never met him.

My first association with newspapers goes way back to the late 1940s when my job was to deliver the nearby Anderson Independent on my bicycle. My route covered a small portion of Lavonia (Ga.) with papers being dropped at homes of subscribers. Lavonia was my hometown as well as the hometown of the late Earnest Vandiver, Jr. who served as governor of Georgia. Vandiver was probably the youngest mayor in the state about the time my work began delivering the Independent, which didn’t last but a few weeks. So, my first venture into the newspaper world was not an enjoyable oneV.

The story is told of a young lad named Johnny who told his parents he had rather be called John. He was a tall and skinny young boy with a crew cut the color of straw. He entered the commercial world for the first time in 1958 selling newspapers on the streets, the Boardwalk and beaches of Ocean City, Maryland. With experience, comes knowledge, so Johnny stayed with this method of getting newspapers in the hands of readers longer than I did.

The Daily and Sunday Sun were delivered from Baltimore to Ocean City by a sea plane. The plane would taxi to a wooden dock after landing and a heavyset lady would meet it. She would help unload the wire bound bundles of papers. She would then clip the wires and count out to each of the paperboys the number of papers requested. Each boy paid three cents per copy for his papers and then went out to sell them for a nickel. They paid 10 cents for the Sunday paper and sold them for 15 cents.

There was a no return policy, so Johnny and the other boys had to eat the loss for any unsold papers. Johnny was really a good paper salesman. He rarely ever had to eat any unsold papers. Day by day, his profits grew, so at the end of each month, he would earn more than $100, which was a lot of money 50 years ago.

After a few short weeks on the job, Johnny was able to buy a bicycle with a large basket in front over a half size wheel. The basket would hold 100 papers. Johnny kept a heavy plastic sheet in the basket so when rain came, his papers would not get wet because wet papers don’t sell so you have to eat them. On pretty days Johnny could ride his bicycle with no hands and fold papers for throwing at the same time.

One of the areas where his paper sales were good was at the apartments at the end of the Boardwalk that ran for 21 blocks. Another high sales volume for his papers was to men going out to the fishing grounds. Members of the Coast Guard Station at the Inlet also liked to get a copy of the paper early in the morning.

With the dollars from the fisherman, apartment dwellers and Coast Guard men in his pocket, Johnny knew it was going to be a fine day. On reflection from the man he would become, Johnny already knew the secrets of successful capitalism offered in this great nation in so many different fields of work; know your own business as well as you can. Buy low, sell high, and go where the customers are.

From a very modest start in 1968 with the purchase of four small newspapers, our family worked hard at developing Trib Publications, Inc. God has truly blessed us over the years and we give Him all the credit, although delivering the Anderson Independent on a bicycle didn’t last very long.

HHJ News