50 years on, restitution, forgiveness still hoped for
BY NICK SALTARELLI
Special to the VOICE
In 1965 I was a 13-year-old paperboy delivering The Welland Evening Tribune. I’d inherited the route from my older brother that spring. He’d had it for four years. When he was 17 and moving onto a real job he handed the route over to me. My parents said it would be a good experience. Teach me about money and responsibility. I accepted it begrudgingly.
It was 40 households in the Welland city core. A prime route.
After school I’d ride my bike to East Main Street to pick up my allotment. When the presses were down we had to wait, sometimes until after dark. The boys with corner pickups were worse off because they waited in the elements. Pressroom pickups were inside the shipping dock. Lighted, warm and dry.
We were entrepreneurs. A weekly subscription to the Tribune was 55 cents; we kept 10. Every day we’d drop the paper on doorsteps and move on, except Thursdays, which was payday at the Atlas, the Tubes, Union Carbide and Welland Iron and Brass.
On Thursdays we’d knock on the door with the customer’s punch card in hand and say, “Collect!”
Most times they’d hand over 55 cents and I’d punch a hole in their card and one in mine. Simple way to keep track. Once in awhile they’d pay 60 cents and say, “Keep the change!” A good tip. Two nickels’d buy a comic book. A dime tip was exceptional. I had one big tipper on State Street who’d sometimes hand over three quarters and say, “Go buy yourself a drumstick at Albanese’s” at the corner on Plymouth Road. Mr. Albanese was a tightwad. He’d cut the ends off those three-cent licorice cigars, roll them in red sprinkles then sell them three for a penny.
Some subscribers didn’t like to pay. We all had a few. We would show up at their door on Thursdays and they'd say, “Catch you next week, kid.” Sometimes they’d give me a quarter and call it an "advance.” It could go on for weeks, and sometimes I got stiffed for good.
Each week I’d remit $18—45 cents for each subscriber. Most weeks I collected more. On a bad week I was shy, so I had to make it up out of my own pocket. Mostly it worked out, but not always. Two of my customers quietly moved away, debt unpaid. Not unique to the city core. Happened all over. We paperboys talked amongst ourselves about it. Mostly we’d leave a note tucked into the paper as a reminder of amount due but it didn’t always result in getting paid.
One lady—a single-mom—lived with her son, a year my junior, in a rundown apartment on a dead-end street by the canal, west of King, north of Lincoln. It was Albert or State or Regent. I don’t remember. She never tipped and always ran a tab. And usually grumpy—cigarette dangling from the side of her mouth, head tilted to one side and one eye squinting the smoke away. In August, after she’d run up a seven-week tab, she disappeared from the door and reappeared with a handful of coins. She claimed I’d forgotten to punch her card one of those weeks way back. She paid for six. I felt ripped off.
It was a warm Thursday afternoon mid-October, real Indian summer. The single mom hadn’t paid up since that August rip-off and I’d already left two reminders. I knocked on her screen door to no answer. I knocked again, harder. After awhile I stiffened my spine, opened the door and walked brazenly into the kitchen, stopped and listened. Not a sound. I looked in the direction she’d gone to retrieve cash those months before and spied a jar on top of the fridge. I took it down and found inside a $5 bill and four quarters. Almost exactly what she owed. I took the money, replaced the jar, dropped the paper on the stoop and said, “We’re even, lady. Have a nice life.”
Is Welland's Most Wanted 1965 known to you? Let us know: [email protected]
I was pretty satisfied with myself. I solicited a new customer on King St. and stopped delivering to the single mom. But the next Monday I was called into the foreman’s office at the warehouse and got chewed out for missing her deliveries. I protested that she was a bum customer. Hadn’t paid me in months. Your problem, not mine, he snarled. And it wasn’t the paperboy’s business to decide who did or didn’t get the Tribune. There were boys waiting in line for a plum route like mine.
I resumed deliveries under a cloud. On Thursday, when I went to collect, if I told her that she didn’t have to pay, she’d figure out I was the one who stole the six dollars and call the police. So I said, “Collect!” She disappeared and I could hear the lid coming off the jar. She yelled a long curse at her son who protested innocence and I made no effort to intervene. I realised those six dollars in the jar had been earmarked to pay her debt to me. The next week she paid what she didn’t actually owe, minus the two days I’d missed. She eyed me suspiciously. She suspected my guilt but could not be sure.
I’d stolen from a poor single-mother and allowed an innocent to take the blame. It was the most despicable thing I’ve ever done. I didn’t know how to make it right without admitting guilt or exposing myself to capture. I was a cowardly thief. For a time I resolved to re-enter that kitchen and sneak the money back into the jar, but when the time came I froze. Couldn’t risk it. Send it in the mail? She’d recognise my handwriting on the envelope. Sneak out at night and leave it in the mailbox? Parents might notice, or I might get caught, and I could never be sure that somebody else wouldn’t find and keep the money.
I was in huge trouble if anybody ever found out what I’d done. I rationalized—she wasn’t a nice lady anyway; she’d cheated me out of five weeks’ profit; she’d brought it on herself. I pushed it to the back of my mind.
To the dismay of my older brother who’d built it up, I gave up the route in late November, with only a few weeks to go till the really fat tips you get at Christmas. Most people would dole out one or two dollars. Maybe even $5!
Twelve years passed and this foulest of deeds festered like a boil in my mind. I was now married with a child of my own, living and working 500 miles away.
While visiting my parents in Welland I returned to the street with a $50 bill in my wallet, determined to ease my conscience and right a wrong. But the house was no longer there. There was an empty lot on a dead-end street.
Whoever you are, and you’d be into your 80s by now, know that I have carried with me what I did to you these 50-plus years ago.
$6 in October 1965 compounded with interest to present day equals $300. If you or your son read this, and can fill in the details that I have left off, contact the Voice. I have a cheque for you. And a request for forgiveness.
