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  Brevity Eludes Me
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maurice pic pdf.png
California Christmas, 2005

 

Robert Charles Ehrlich with Grandmother Bobbie and Grandfather Maurice Ehrlich

 

 

I strive for

BREVITY....

It eludes me.....

 

I heard a speech given by a man who taught Public Speaking.....the heart of his message was about brevity....He said in speaking to a big audience, something like:  Speak clearly, be brief, and be seated.   I have tried to apply that rule to other episodes in living, but without much success.  For example, If I was advertising products for sale in the paper, I always tried to get as much product in the ad as possible, hoping to make a "sale".....and when decorating a retail window, the same mistake made the scene appear cluttered.....nevertheless...I kept on doing it, and have never quit.....so beware...I will try to be brief, but have to admit, don't know how...

 

Some of you are aware of a business venture we had in Atlanta....it was the brainchild of a man I met in New York....but I created the name.....It was: The Great Southeast Music Hall, Emporium, and Performing Arts Exchange, Incorporated.......It was three businesses, and I wanted the customer to know it.....Of course, the Atlanta Constitution changed it to The Music Hall.....and that stuck. But the logo still included the descriptive name.  1. We had music and comedy performers; 2. We had an Emporium with famous name sandwiches such as ''The Jimmie Buffet"....a tuna, sourdough, cream cheese sandwich;  and, 3. We booked entertainment for special events such as Georgia Tech fraternity parties, etc...

So, to me, it was necessary to say it in the title....I still think that way....

 

Now the reason I went into so much detail, is because the first part of this six part story has another such title, it is:

 

Highly Opinionated Thoughts About Follett Citizens During the World War II Years Made While Delivering The Grit.

 

Williamsport PA was the home of The Grit newspaper, a weekly paper that sold mostly in rural America, as the daily papers in those days were sometimes two days old before they were delivered, so a weekly review newspaper was welcome to a lot of rural folks needing information.....It was a tabloid that had more entertainment in it than news, which made it so appealing to distant reaches of the country. 

 

I had the Follett franchise of about 40 customers....The cost when I started delivering it was 5 cents.....3 cents went back to the company, and my profit was 2 cents...They raised it to 7 cents, and raised my profit to 3 cents....and eventually to a dime....and four cents profit.  I mention the price because the cost of the newspaper became the part of the discussion with the customers that helped feed the impression I developed about them....at least some of it.

 

In reminiscing about the past....I have to begin in the Post Office.....The Grit came parcel post, and arrived Friday morning....I then delivered it on Friday or Saturday depending on the time of the year.  The postmaster was A.C. Cotney Sr.....and he and I did not see eye to eye.....I wanted him to give me my papers before he "posted" all the mail.....He would not, and I always had to wait in the lobby until the mail was all posted, then he would open the window and throw out my papers....I always thought that was so inconsiderate, because he knew I had work to do....So, my first opinion...

 

My first customer was Amber Frazier.....I loved this woman....but hated her little yappy dog, which always barked at me every minute I was in that house.... Amber, a spinster, big, with a loud voice, a smoker, living in a very hot heated home.  Always paid me quickly, and called me by name....In later years, after her Mother passed away worked at various jobs in town, and to everyone's surprise eloped with a traveling cookware salesman that people called "Pots and Pans".....So, while it was a bit comical, it turned out to be very real.....to me, a lesson that explained why, "you never know"....

 

Another of my character customers was a man named Elver Glasgow, but they called him Choppy.  I think that phrase would sell a book...."His Name Is Elver But They Call him Choppy"....anyhow, this man had character....He had been a car salesman for my Uncle T.R. Laubhan during the depression...T.R. had several 'Choppy stories”.  It seems Choppy had just sold, or traded would be a better word, a car to some farmer in the area for some cash and other items.....He told T.R. it was a heck of a trade, it involved a list of items including some cash, an old car, canned pickles, and some chickens.....Choppy said, he would take the chickens.....

Later, Choppy was running the Phillips 66 station and selling wholesale products to farmers, and often would be gone when I came by the station.  He admonished me for not getting his paper one time, and I told him I came by, but he was gone....He pointed to a shelf as a place to leave it if he was not there....I wanted to say to him....Why don't you leave the money there too?, but I didn't....The next week, I went by, he was gone, and when I went to the shelf....found a note saying, "Thanks, Choppy," and 15 cents.....

That was the profit of three papers....I never forgot that...

 

Main Street was my lodestone....I had a dozen or more customers.....all pleasant and business like....I loved selling to that street.....There was John and Ernie Reid.....I always had to wait a few minutes if they were in the middle of welding something or sharpening a plow lathe.   I didn't mind too much, as it gave me a chance to look at the inner workings of that blacksmith shop.  It was an engineering marvel....One large motor mounted on the ceiling ran a large drive shaft that ran every machine in the building...all you had to do was pull a lever down from the ceiling.  Ernie usually paid, but they both would stop whatever they were doing, and talk.   They liked to talk, and did it slowly, and each of them usually would take off their hats and wipe their sweaty brows....and then take out the leather purse and pay me.  That purse was a curiosity, because it was long enough that it had to be folded, and contained both coins and paper money.  I stopped the whole Reid enterprise for a 5 cent newspaper.  One story I heard about them later was rather interesting.  They had contracted for the Hudson Auto dealership about 1940 just before the War....and in doing so had displayed two Hudson Terraplanes....One copper colored coupe, and one gray four door sedan......It seems they sold very few if any new cars, and ended up driving those two exhibit cars for the next 20 or so years....Ernie the coupe, and John the sedan.  They were good citizens, John even took his turn as mayor.  I employed them over the years to repair broken equipment, sharpen plow discs, and they had the best assortment of bolts around....When Mauri Ann was a toddler it was Ernies wife Elva who took care of that "little redhead" as she called her....They were old Ivanhoe folks, and special people..

 

Naming Main Street customers does nothing to tell who they were; It seems they all provided ammunition for stories, most of which were pleasant.....almost all of them....

 

One such character was an older man Tab Frazier....he was considered by many to be the local Mark Twain.....to me he was more of a Don Rickles.....and I usually tried to make that a short visit.....But he was interesting....there are lots of funny stories attributed to him, but in my case, he seemed to make me the butt of his humor, and I gave him short shrift.....

 

The exact opposite was a woman who was later to become one of the most important women in my life....her name: Fannie Markley......She was always so nice to me.....and so congenial and jolly....a little lady with a big smile.....Little did I know I would someday get to eat at her table, and get to share some of her friendships that she had accumulated through the years....She was another Ivanhoe transfer....and she had a vast array of pioneer friends, and I got to know a lot of them because of her.....as she became the Great Grandmother to my children....She had experiences to me that are the unusual experiences of the age, and could be the foundation for an epic novel...maybe another time.

 

Main Street customers included The Fiskin's Produce, The Skaggs Follett Times newspaper, Clarence Harrelson City Drug, and another kind-to-little-boys guy, Sid Brown.  Sid was the manager for The Follett Consumers Supply, the local Co-op filling station....He managed the station while running a dairy farm over in Catesby, Oklahoma.   He always invited me into the station to sit by the fire......and I got to know him during those years, and later at age 11 when Dad bought a Holstein nurse cow from him for my 4-H project.   That was a fiasco.....I had to feed that cow and keep her in good milk giving condition in order to get my club calf started and big enough to wean....This was to be a years project, and was supposed to teach young boys a lot about the machinations of cows, calves, feeding, cleaning, grooming etc.  It did all that, and more.....The thing that was bad was that it had to be done every day, rain or shine, snow or sleet.....I am not sure it taught what it was supposed to, but it did teach me that the hoped for ending might not be attainable without determined effort.......Luck was not in play in that business. 

 

The Grit sent out sales achievement prizes.....A lot of the prizes were great if you had a bicycle..my route was not like you see in the movies....a boy riding and throwing newspapers....a bicycle would have been an impediment....so I took other prizes....I cashed in points for a change maker for my belt....that wasn't what it was cracked up to be either, as it was jammed most of the time....and I didn't make change anyway...

 

I grew up during the forties....working on the farm, taking care of the club calf, delivering papers, learning to drive, and graduating high school in 1949.....an 11 year project....the people in the class behind me had to go an extra year, as the school added a 12 grade to the curriculum 

 

I think the war year 40's demanded quite a lot from it's younger boys, as the draft took the majority of young men, and somebody had to step up to the line.....And in a rural atmosphere where there weren't too many paved roads....no stop lights......and not much traffic....we could be taught....and they called on us...One of my city associates from New York asked me one time......Why is it that you can do everything, and how did you learn to do so much?   It became evident to him after I fixed little things that didn't work anymore.......Well, I thought about that........I always thought I was a little bit persecuted.....turns out, I was being apprenticed for living....

 

Next Review #2......The 50's.....College, Children, Chickens, Combines, and Clothes....

 

Maurice Ehrlich 01/12/07

 

 

 

 

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