Below is another chapter from Neville Martin’s Playing Against the Wind – his memoir of growing up in Oriental Bay in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Long before the newspaper was delivered by the process of being flung, cocooned in plastic, from the window of a moving car, boys or girls undertook the task of distribution on foot. Here I speak of the late lamented Evening Post. The Dominion you had to purchase from a dairy or street vendor.
A paper run meant a steady, if menial, income. I entered the business, as it were, as a sub-contractor. My friend Johnny Edmundson split his run, and his ‘pay’, with me. He, in company with 99 per cent of the human race, had a better head for business than I and handled all financial negotiations with the sub-agent. I collected my pile of papers every afternoon around 4.30 and got on with it.
The best part was Saturday morning, when we went off to collect what was owing from the subscribers, along with any tips they might feel inclined to offer.
We had nicknames for many of our customers; but today I can recall but two. One was a Mrs Schneiderman who lived in the Anscombe flats on Oriental Terrace. We labelled her ‘Mysteries of the East’ because inside her front door was a vase, which might possibly have been oriental in origin, placed on an occasional table. Behind it stood a standard lamp (with a red bulb), which caused the lamp to cast a shadow onto a curtain. This tableau we saw as somehow Eastern and, along with the name Schneiderman, suggested something distinctly mysterious. You couldn’t get much more exotic than that in Wellington in 1952.
Then there was ‘Magic Carpet’. The lady in question lived on the second storey of a house towards the bottom of Hay Street and, apparently, had some trouble with stairs. Collecting the paper money from her required a special routine. You knocked on the downstairs door and waited for her upstairs window to open.
“Paper money,” you bellowed. “one and three.” Then you waited. A head would appear from the window, followed by an arm, which released the card supplied by the Evening Post to all subscribers for the purpose of keeping track of their transactions. It would flutter gracefully to the ground like something from Ali Baba (on still days) or head further afield if the wind was in capricious mood. Once the card had been retrieved and initialled, the correct coinage was dropped from the window – sometimes accompanied by a tip. You then slipped the card under the old dear’s door and the job was done.
And then there was Paul (surname withheld to protect his relatives), who lived in a large house further up the street and of whom the neighbours lived in constant dread. Paul, it seems, had been a noted civil servant, till the bottle got the better of him. He was not only a spectacular alcoholic but a practicing fire bug to boot. A number of minor blazes were ascribed to his enthusiasm for conflagrations. None, I think, caused major damage. On one locally famous occasion he wrote in to the 2ZB request session and asked the station to play ‘I want to set the world on fire’. The adults of the neighbourhood were horrified. The young thought it hilarious.
Collecting Paul’s paper money was generally the highlight of the morning. He usually did something outrageous. On one magnificent occasion his door opened in response to our knock and there was Paul, resplendent in blue and white striped pyjamas, admiring a blaze he had just ignited in a wastepaper basket. He gazed approvingly at his handiwork for a moment or two, then opened his fly and piddled the blaze into submission.
We elected to retreat, rather than complicate matters with high finance. There was always next week.
