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Spending Money

Close by in the same area was the Chicago Stadium and a little farther over was Cook County Hospital and a couple of blocks west was Crane Technical School. I especially remember the Stadium because they had the Democratic National Convention there in 1940 when FDR ran against Wendel Wilkie. I worked the Stadium selling newspapers. I don't remember everything exactly; I was nine years old at the time. But there was a big front entrance and a couple of smaller service entrances. I would pick up a dozen or so newspapers from a vendor, go to a service entrance, and walk right in and start peddling my newspapers. I was right there on the main floor where they had all the signs and banners for the different states. That's where the action was and I sold my papers rather quickly. I didn't find out till years later that everyone needed some kind of permit or badge to be admitted into the Chicago Stadium, even for selling newspapers. I must have been too small of a fish to worry about. I just walked right in like I owned the place and went about selling my papers.

It doesn't take a kid too long to wise up to some of the different angles in the city. I remember the second day of the convention. I was making the rounds in the Stadium during the lunch hour after my original papers were sold. I would find newspapers lying around everywhere, obviously read and then discarded. I would look for the better ones, put them back together and then, in the afternoon when the delegates got back from lunch, I would go out and sell them all over again. I made good money doing that and I cut out the middleman in the process. Talk about recycling, heck I was doing creative recycling sixty years ago. That was using your street smarts to first recognize an opportunity, then capitalize on it. I was almost nine years old. The hardest part of the whole affair was that I had to convince Mom that I didn't steal the money.

While living there on Seeley Avenue, I would sell newspapers every Sunday morning too, right after Bible school. The same vendor would sign me out with ten papers. The Sunday Tribune sold for 10 cents. I got to keep a penny for every paper I sold. I would start out on a street and yell "Get your Sunday paper" or something similar in Italian that I learned from the Italian vendors. It was something to do and a dime was a lot of money then. Candy bars were a nickel and a loaf of bread was fifteen cents.

One Sunday I had a great day. I sold sixteen newspapers and I had sixteen cents all to myself. I knew exactly what I was going to do with part of it. On my way to school and coming home from school I would see this blind man. Always on the same corner, with his dark glasses, his sign that said, "I am blind", his red and white cane, his lunch bucket, and his tin cup. I passed him twice every day. Once going to school, and once coming home from school. I truly felt sorry for him. I was inspired by something I had learned in Bible school I suspect. So I took three cents of my recent bonanza and dropped it in his tin cup one penny at a time so as to get the greatest effect. Oh, he was so grateful and I felt so very good about it. I was really pleased with myself, really I was.

Then one day I was late getting home from school. As I approached the corner where he was, I could see him sitting there in his usual spot. Then I saw him pull back his sleeve and he appeared to be looking at a wristwatch. What is this? A blind man looking? At anything? Next he glanced up the street. A streetcar was coming. I'll be damned. This guy takes off his dark glasses and puts them in his breast pocket then folds up his "I am blind" sign and puts it in the other breast pocket. His cane was a collapsing kind and he folded that up and put it in his lunch bucket along with his tin cup. He stood up, stretched his arms, picked up his lunch bucket, and got on the streetcar, obviously going home. His days work was done.

Needless to say, with that traumatic exposure to reality, plus the knowledge of my being three cents poorer, I grew up a lot in those few moments. At first, I could not imagine a smart kid like me being taken like that, and it took a few moments for everything to sink in. still, I wasn't really angry with him, but I knew that I had been suckered.

Close by this same apartment were several square blocks of empty tenement houses. What were they doing with the tenement houses back in 1940? Why, exactly the same thing they are doing with them today. Tearing them down to make way for newer housing projects. We used this whole project as a play area, and as a supply depot for wood, nails, or anything else that might serve a purpose.

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