Well for one thing we didn’t get an allowance in our family;
there were five of us children.  There was just not anything
left over after covering the basics such as food, housing,
and clothing.  We had enough to eat and a house that had a
least one warm room during the winter.  We received hand-
me-down shirts and coats.  We got a new pair of shoes and
two new pairs of jeans each fall for school that had to last
us until the following year at the same time.  We didn’t
have anything left over for Christmas or birthdays.  So with
no funding from our parents, what did we do?  This was the
time between 1952 and 1954.  I was between ten and
twelve years old.  


(1) Cloverine Salve:  This came from an ad in the
“Progressive Farmer”, a family magazine of the time
formatted toward the Southern farm or rural family.  They
would send you twelve containers of Cloverine salve.  You
were to sell them at 25 cents each, after which you were to
send them two dollars.  This allowed you to retain the
remaining dollar.  The salve was in a circular tin container
with a diameter of about two and one-half inches and a
depth of at most three quarters of an inch.  They were
shipped to you in a cardboard tube, which also served as a
nice carrying case as you sold your wares.  Also as a selling
gimmick, they sent you twelve notebook size glossy
pictures that you would give one to each customer as they
purchased your salve.  About a third of the pictures had a
religious theme, and the rest were nature scenes, such as
flower arrangements or animals.  The salve was a little
expensive as you could get a fairly large size jar of
petroleum jelly for the same quarter at Wood’s or Rose’s
Dime store in uptown Rockingham.  However, Cloverine
salve could be used as a lip balm and was much better for
that purpose than petroleum jelly.  One of the problems
with this endeavor was that you had to solicit a different
neighborhood with each sales venture.  My first
neighborhood was my own, that is, the area within South
Caroline Street, Bryan Street and the road that is now
called Old River Road (home to the current VFW
building).  One of my other routes was out Midway Road.  I
don’t remember the other routes, but I’d bet I sold twenty
or twenty-five of those tubes (12 packs) of Cloverine salve.  
You could usually sell the entire tube on a Saturday
morning.  You would make one dollar for four hours’ work;
that’s just twenty-five cents per hour.  By the way, I just
looked for Cloverine salve on the Internet.  It now sells for
almost three dollars for each of these small containers.


(2) Candy Route:  After school, I would drop by Watts
Cleaners, located on West Washington Street at the time,
to borrow ninety cents from my mother who worked there.  
I would then go down to the Gore Wholesale Company
located near the end of West Washington Street across the
street from the Great Falls Elementary School and beside
the Sealtest Dairy distributor.  I could buy a box of twenty-
four candy bars for ninety cents.  I would then start my
route toward Harrington Square selling the candy for five
cents each as I went.  There was at least one furniture store
before Watt Cleaners that I solicited.  Then I tried the
people at Watts Cleaners, where sometimes one of the
pressers would buy one of my candy bars.  I then went on
up to the intersection of Caroline Street and West
Washington Street where I turned south to Land’s
International Tractor and Truck Sales (they also sold other
farm equipment).  There were usually two or three good
customers here especially the mechanics.  Then I reversed
back up to West Washington Street and headed on toward
the center of town.  Soon, I was at Penegar’s Motor
Company where they sold new Oldsmobiles and Pontiacs.  
This place was exceptionally clean including the
mechanics’ work area.  All the floors were always freshly
painted.  Several of the mechanics would often buy a candy
bar from me, but the salesmen must have been watching
their diets, or maybe they were just not inclined much to
candy bars.  Then I would head down a side street right in
front of the old bus station that connected Washington and
Franklin Streets.  There were several businesses here
including Bowles’s Furniture Company and a photography
shop.  Then I looped back to Washington Street and
continued my trek eastward toward the Square.  From
here, I was soon at McGinnis Motors where they sold new
Fords, Mercuries, and Lincolns (mostly Fords).  My father
drove a Ford most of the time we were in Rockingham,
including the company cars furnished by the Sunshine
Biscuit Company; so I knew some of the people there.  This
place was a bonanza for candy sales.  Both the mechanics
and the office staff were receptive to my candy.  Often, I
would sell out by this time.  If not, I would continue up
Washington Street and cut right onto Lee Street where I
would cover the department and jewelry stores there.  I
would almost always sell out by the time I reached Franklin
Street from Lee Street.  Rarely I would eat the last candy
bar, but I don’t remember doing that except once.  For the
candy, I had some choices, but the box I purchased was all
the same kind for a given day.  Mr. Gore would not let me
mix them.  I could choose Fifth Avenue, Power House,
Clark bars, Milk Shake bars, Milky Ways, Snickers and
maybe a few others.  I never used the ten-cent bars such as
Mounds, Almond Joy or Mars Bars.  Mr. Gore didn’t carry
Baby Ruth or Butterfinger.  One nice thing about the candy
route was that you had the same customer base every
time.  You got to know them quite well.  This entire process
could be accomplished in about an hour.  I usually did this
two or three times per week.  Thirty cents per hour was not
bad for a ten or eleven year old back then.  I usually was
finished before dark even in the wintertime.  I remember
that I made and saved enough money to buy at least two
new top-of-the-line dressy sport shirts for school, and that
they cost three dollars each at Collins’ Department Store
located at the corner of Lee Street and Franklin Street
directly across from the Court House.  This building now
houses part of the R.W Goodman Furniture Store
Complex.  To view my route, go to “Ye Olde Scrapbook”
section of this website.  Go past the yellow section to the
green section.  Choose “HB-1968 Washington St Square”
which is near the bottom of the list.  The vantage point is
about where Watt’s Cleaners was located, looking toward
Harrington Square about three blocks east.      


(3) Paper Routes:  I tried delivering newspapers for the
“Richmond County Journal” for a couple months.  I was at
most eleven when I started this, maybe only ten years old.  
I had about thirty customers all in my neighborhood.  We
only delivered three days per week (Monday, Wednesday
and Friday).  They cost five cent each, or fifteen cents
delivered to your doorstep each week.  So for a week, I
collected four dollars and fifty cents from the customers.  I’
m not sure of the exact amount, but I think I had to turn in
three dollars and fifty cents to the Journal office each
week.  That means I netted one dollar per week if I were
able to collect from all my customers.  The vast majority of
my customers were good honest people; however, I did
have a couple who would not pay their bill.  I cut them
from my route, but I still had to pay for those newspapers.  
It took about an hour to complete the route, plus we
usually had to wait twenty minutes at the Journal office
before they got that old printing press going. So for three
hours of delivering plus one hour of waiting, I was back to
twenty-five cents per hour.  This was during the time of
“The Beast of Bladenboro”, and it was getting dark mighty
early.  One day it finally got dark before I finished my
route.  I had about five customers who lived over on what
is now called Old River Road near the VFW, which was not
there at this time.  I was afraid to go over there so near to
the wooded area, which is where, the new highway 220 is
now situated.  One of my customers called my mother to
complain about not having her newspaper.  My mother
said if I didn’t go deliver those papers right then, I had to
give up my paper route.  I did give it up.  You really need to
be at least twelve years old before you can manage a paper
route.  My two older brothers had done well with their
“Charlotte News” routes, but they were two and four years
older than I was.  We had two large newspapers coming
from Charlotte back then, the afternoon “Charlotte News”
and the morning “Charlotte Observer” (they later
merged).  Both of these Charlotte newspapers where much
more popular than our local paper; I would estimate their
combined circulation in Richmond County back then was
about five times that of our local paper.  Many potential
customers on my route said they couldn’t afford to take
two newspapers, and that they thought the Charlotte
papers offered much more news for the same price per
paper.  The “Observer” was a seven days a week paper;
whereas the “News” was six days.  I still remember Mr. Neil
Cadeau, Senior and Mr. Neil Cadeau, Junior.  Mr. Cadeau,
Junior, would usually accept my money as I paid my
weekly bill.  They were both fine gentlemen.  Mr. Cadeau,
Junior, was nice, but all business.  Mr. Cadeau, Senior
would stop and talk with you, but I don’t remember what
we talked about.   


(4) Errands: This was not very lucrative or regular as the
first three items above.  I mentioned to all my neighbors
(usually the ladies of the house) that I was available to run
errands for them.  This usually meant to the grocery store,
but one time I took a bracelet to a jewelry store to have
some gems (probably cut glass) re-glued.  One neighbor
lady just across the street from us liked to send me to the
store for snuff.  Ms. Hassie Brady who was working the day
shift at Mr. Pop Brady’s store at the bottom of the hill
(where South Caroline Street intersected with what is now
called Old River Road, just across Veteran’s Memorial
Bridge from the old depot) was a little suspicious, so I
asked her to call Mrs. Jones (name changed) to verify my
mission.  Mrs. Jones was partial to “Tube Rose” snuff.  
Snuff cost fifteen cent per can back then.  She would give
me five cents to go to the store for her.  She did what they
called “dipping snuff”.  She would take a pinch and put it
between her cheek and her gum.  Then after awhile she
would spit the entire contents of her mouth out onto the
ground or into a cuspidor (or even an empty tin can) if she
were inside.  Some men, including my maternal
Grandfather, would chew tobacco and do the same
spitting.  I told Ms. Hassie she didn’t have to worry about
me ever doing that.


(5) Drink Bottles: All soft drinks back then were in thick
glass bottles.  Cokes were 6.5 ounces.  Pepsi was 10
ounces.  Nehi orange and grape sodas as well as Royal
Crown (RC) colas were 12 ounces.  Most children including
myself were partial to RC’s mostly for the extra volume.  
These bottles were returnable and required a two-cent
deposit if you left the store with them.  At the super
markets (A&P, Dixie Home and Colonial Stores) they had a
station as you entered their store where you would return
your bottles.  The store manager (or one of his assistants)
would give you a slip of paper, which was then used as a
credit to your total bill as you left the checkout counter.  
Most stores would not buy bottles from kids.  However, if
you went shopping with your parents to the super markets,
they would give the credit slip to your parents who would
then find a way to get the money to you.  The bottle
handling was a huge non-profit expense to the stores; I’m
sure they were very delighted when the bottlers went to
cans and non-returnable plastic bottles which happened in
the 1980’s.  You could usually collect at least fifty bottles
per week by scouring the ditches in your neighborhood and
surrendering areas.  My Mother prohibited us from
collecting bottles on US highway # 1, which was about two
blocks south, or two blocks east of our house (but I did it
anyway since they had a lot of bottles from the interstate
traffic – remember there were no Interstate Highways
back then.  US # 1 had all the north-south traffic traveling
between New York and Florida).  Sometimes my older
brothers would allow me to borrow their bicycles (which
they had purchased from their earnings from their paper
routes) for this purpose especially if I gave them a
percentage of the take.  It would take at least two or three
days of several hours each to collect fifty bottles.  If this
were five hours in total, my hourly rate was twenty cents
per hour.                   


Discussion: These were not bad wages for someone my age
back then.  Minimum wage for adults for large employers
was only fifty cents per hour, which is what some of the mill
workers earned.  I don’t think there were many mill
workers who made one dollar or more per hour except for
management level people.  By the time I was fourteen I was
able to get a job in a bicycle shop at thirty-five cents (later
fifty cents) per hour.  My first job as a bagboy at the
Colonial Stores in Gastonia in 1957 was at seventy-five
cents per hour.  I think Mr. Hoffman (the manager) gave
me a little more since he knew my father from his Sunshine
Biscuits days when Mr. Hoffman was the manager at the
Southern Pines’ Colonial Store.  (Small world sometimes,
isn’t it?)