Setting Back Chicago Clocks, Selling Newspapers at 4 am, Unromantically Once-Upon-A-Time…by Robert M. Katzman
Setting back Clocks, Selling Newspapers at 4 am, Unromantically Once-Upon-A-Time
by Robert M. Katzman © March 11, 2018
Eyes fluttering open in a silent room half-lit by sunlight squeezing past opaque shades, I remember what day it is, and though no one else can hear it, I sigh. Once upon a time, now like some white-haired Revolutionary War veteran fifty years later, I am thinking that maybe there’s no one left anymore to remember the complications of this twice-a-year Chicago South Side moment.
I woke up with all of my conflicted emotions mechanically assembled as I remembered the day, and I stopped moving, because I didn’t have to get up if I didn’t feel like it, my momentary protest against my past. My ancient past…
Running a wooden newsstand on a Sunday morning with thousands of newspapers to assemble and sell, slightly warmed by capricious kerosene heaters belching black wispy smoke along with their heat, a small army of children and adults arrive in the dark in Hyde Park, wordlessly take up their tasks. Little conversation, multiple cups of black and tan coffee steaming in a range of hand held ceramic cups from home, long before coffee was something bought on every third corner in America.
Once, people made their own coffee. Really.
Mountains of bundles of Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribunes to sort into the newspaper itself and the fat inserts which were shoved into them, backwards, to visually insure the stuffing was actually in there. Not every newsstand did this then, in the Seventies, each of us free to be slaves after our own fashion, but I long ago wanted to be certain that the TV Guides wouldn’t fall out on the sidewalks as the customer walked away.
It was a skill to be acquired, shoving the rough open-paged edge of the assorted advertisement and the Sunday comics into the also open edge of the center of the receiving once thick Sunday newspaper, before computers in a far off unimaginable future rendered paper obsolete as way of transmitting “news”.
Add the Sunday New York Times to this mix of small and large hands, wrinkled eyes and smooth young faces, a burden that came in five parts to assemble, because, well, it was the most important newspaper in America, it felt, and worthy of almost three times the labor for the peons of the press
Those of us who sold newspapers to cars in the rain, in the snow, in the sleet, cold water melting on our eyelashes, dripping past our scarves, soaking our skin, running down our necks and chilling us. Making change and shivering, blindly looking into the headlights of the next car to be serviced.
But on Daylight Savings Times, whenever one of those twice a year “Spring Forward/Fall Back” days happened, always on 2 am Sunday mornings, in theory, newsstand people, like everyone else but just a little better, had to awake and arrive at the old time, because an unknown number of people would still arrive at the earlier time if it was in spring, because once awake, many of us are on sleepy automatic behavior.
So if we were to all assemble at the newsstand at 5 am normally, like the week before, while everyone else in the Central Time Zone would snuggle up for another hour of sleep, we had to arrive at godforsaken 4 am to accommodate those unknown numbers of customers who forgot about clocks and left their houses too early, expecting Bob’s Newsstand to be awaiting their arrival. Especially in Hyde Park, where it was claimed by the University of Chicago that literacy was 100%!
Yeah?
Come sit next to me on an average Saturday night, maybe Midnight, watching a conveyor belt of drunken surly humans flow past, some stopping to look at me under my smoky kerosene lantern swaying in the wind, flame wavering, casting noirish shadows, and with hot alcoholic fumes belching from their sagging mouths, ask me what time it was. Better that than wanting a newspaper, because if that, then all the loose change they were clutching would fall through their fingers, clatter on the cement and they’d want me to pick it up for them, sometimes a dangerous decision to make.
On less windy nights, sometimes I could smell the unique fragrance wafting through the night air of what used to Irish Mist Whiskey, as some slob was pissing a river on the back of my newsstand, and taking forever to do that, too.
The Daylight Savings Days were an hour longer, multiplied by paying everyone for an hour extra, and after every worker eventually went home, I remained in the darkness in front of the newsstand waiting for whomever might come by, confused by the time change, wanting a newspaper, expecting Bob to be there, and since I wasn’t paid by the hour, I waited for them. On Sunday, normally I worked from 5 am to 6 pm.
Twice a year, I worked from 4 am to 7 pm, hoping to sell at least the same number of newspapers.
Lying in my room, decades later, looking up at my ceiling and remembering how much I dreaded this day each year, I wished my friend, my wife of forty years, who worked with me at that newsstand, were still here so I could nudge her warm body, whisper to her what day it was, watch her sweet smile, and hear her snort a laugh.
Long ago and faraway, but to both of us, only yesterday.
I don’t miss that day, but I sure miss her.
Happy Daylight Saving’s Day!
Bob Katzman
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Publishing News!
Bob Katzman’s two new true Chicago books are now for sale, from him!
Vol. One: A Savage Heart and Vol. Two: Fighting Words
Gritty, violent, friendship, classic American entrepreneurship love, death, heartbreak and the real dirt about surviving in a completely corrupt major city under the Chicago Machine. More history and about one man’s life than a person may imagine.
Please visit my new website: http://www.dontgoquietlypress.com
If a person doesn’t want to use PayPaI, I also have a PO Box & I ship anywhere in America.
Send me a money order with your return and contact info.
I will get your books to you within ten days.
Here’s complete information on how to buy my books:
Vol 1: A Savage Heart and Vol. 2: Fighting Words
My books weigh almost 2 pounds each, with about 525 pages each and there are a total together of 79 stories and story/poems.
Robert M. Katzman
Don’t Go Quietly Press
PO Box 44287
Racine, Wis. 53404-9998 (262)752-3333, 8AM–7PM
Books cost $29.95 each, plus shipping
For: (1)$3.95; (2)$5.95; (3)$7.95; (4)$8.95 (5)$9.95;(6) $10.95
(7) $11.95; (8) $12.95; (9)$13.95 (10)$15.95 (15)$19.95
I am also for hire if anyone wants me to read my work and answer questions in the Chicago/Milwaukee area. Schools should call me for quantity discounts for 30 or more books. Also: businesses, bookstores, private organizations or churches and so on.
My Fighting Words Publishing Co. four original books, published between 2004 and 2007 are now out-of-print. I still have some left and will periodically offer them for sale on my new website.