Jobs in Florence

1. Paper routes 
   1. All involved getting up at 5:30 am or so on Sunday, rest of days were afternoons
   2. I threw my papers while riding my bicycle down the street with papers in a large basket mounted on the handbars with struts to the axle of the front wheel.
   3. I can recall throwing a paper to a house on Jackson Road which had a wall across the front porch and plants on top of the wall. My aim was to throw over the plants and have the paper land on the porch. I had made the throw previously with no problem but on one day I was a bit short and knocked a plant off breaking the pot. it was almost like watching a boom-a-rang in slow motion as the paper rotated on its way to the porch. That led to my aiming for the sidewalk instead in the future.

1. 2. Birmingham News (Mr. Perry) for Anderson News, later to become Books a Million
   1. About 30 or so customers

1. 3. Florence Times (Mr. Hunter Allen)
   1. First route about 50 customers from Bill Compton. Mostly on Cyprus Mill Road
   2. Jody was helping me deliver Sunday papers. Threw paper through the front door, which was largely glass panes. Everyone in the house met in living room to find paper and glass everywhere. He didn’t tell me about this. Found out when collecting.2. Second route about 100 customers from Stanley Wiseman. Mostly on Olive St, and Jackson Rd. , one of the biggest if not the biggest route in town
   3. I could draw map of route from memory with all houses (customers and non-customers) for use by my mother or brother in “throwing the papers.”
   4. Rolling papers coated hands with newsprint which took Lava soap to clean. Used string to wrap them for years, later went to rubber bands. Wrapping papers with string involved running several rounds of string around a rolled paper, breaking the string with a sharp snap, and rolling the rounds of string down the paper until they were entangled enough to hold the paper in its rolled state.
   5. Rolling papers gave me strange development of both wrists and good grip.
   6. One of the houses next to the College had stories with a center hall on each floor (shotgun house style) with rooms off each side of the hall. I assumed at the time that this was built to be an apartment for students. I learned later that this was a house built for members of a religious order of monks.

1. 2. Krogers (Mr. Hudson)
   1. Crashed the glass doors when they were turned off while I was out with a two cart delivery. I stopped the cart I was holding but the front cart slid off and broke the door. He turned it in as a vandalism claim I believe.

1. 2. Krogers – Hollis Bower’s Mother
   1. She opened door for me to put her groceries in and banged car next to her. Owner was inside and exited the car ranting at me about the door hitting his car. Mrs. Bower told him I had nothing to do with it and to talk to her if he had a problem.

1. 3. Krogers (Poss Family)
   1. Bought 4 to 6 baskets of groceries at a time
   2. So big that they took out front seat of car and sat in back seat. Sold us some trees on Imperial Drive.

1. 4. Krogers (?? Taylor)
   1. English major at FSTC
   2. Swept floors at Kroger’s while reciting poetry and Shakespeare
   3. Krogers – Lynnwood Yarbrough
   4. Fellow bagger, later cashier
   5. Ran into him (bearded) at Newark Airport in 1971 or so. Recognized him by his eyes. He was working at the Albert Einstein Laboratory, he said.

1. 6. Krogers – T.S, Stribling, the author
   1. Came to buy groceries.
   2. Lived in TN.
   3. Heard him speak at FSU. Said the S stood for nothing. He once had a middle name (a family surname) that he shared with an Aunt. When his Aunt saw him throwing corn cobs at some pigs she said he was a disgrace to the middle name he then had. After that he used on an S.
   4. Wrote trilogy about Florence area: The Store, The Unfinished Cathedral, and The Forge. The Store was said to be based on the Rogers Dept store in Florence.

1. 7. Krogers – Walter Posey
   1. Cashier mostly, some stocking, some sacking of groceries
   2. Fastest person on a cash register I have ever seen anywhere. No bar code scanning back then.

1. 8. Krogers-“13”
   1. Cashiers would say 13 as you were leaving with groceries as signal to bring back the license number of the person who had written a check to pay.

1. 9. Krogers – Retail Clerks Union
   1. I was a member. Met at Negley Hotel
   2. Won a hamburger in a drawing at a meeting. I have not won any other drawing.

1. 13. Mail Delivery
   1. During the 50s and perhaps later we had two mail deliveries MTWTF and one on Saturday.

1. 14. Store Hours in Florence
   1. Stores closed at 5 or 5:30 on Mon Tues Thurs and Friday
   2. Stores closed at noon on Wednesday and Saturday.
   3. Stores were closed on Sunday

1. 4. The 5 o’clock whistle at Flagg Utica cotton mills operation in East Florence could be heard all around town.

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