Pop Bottle to Pulp

[polymath]

Reading Dave Gaughran's guest post over at Wicked and Tricksy's blog today reminded me of a childhood event I felt like sharing.
http://www.wickedtricksy.com

A Saturday June 1968, I mowed four lawns for a Lincoln each, delivered 100 evening edition newspapers later that afternoon, collected for weekly subscriber bills, and sold 20 newspapers door-to-door to transient lodgers for a daily net of another Lincoln. Weekly rake that week of near half a C-note.

Along the paper route, I came across a bawling girl my age walking her bike. She'd been selling magazine subscriptions door-to-door but had quit work in distress. I asked if she was okay. Her bike chain had come off the sprockets. She didn't know what to do about it. I fixed it and tightened up the fetch of the rear wheel so it wouldn't come off again. Yeah, I had a wrench on me.

My work day done about four p.m., it was time for a treat to spoil my dinner. Eight miles to the nearest geedunk store. No problem, I collected pop bottles along the way. Three dozen all told redeemed for a nickel apiece. Enough for a cold Coke, a couple candy bars, a pulp digest, and a buck to spare.

The magazine salesgirl came into the store. I asked if she'd had any more trouble. No. Thank you for helping. She counted out pennies and a few nickels at the counter, trying to decide between a soda pop and a handful of penny candy or a pulp digest. I treated her to all and a candy bar. She thanked me again. We drank our sodas and chatted at the parking lot curb about the door-to-door salesperson business. Then we went our separate ways.

We'd meet again the next Friday for dinner at her folks' house. They wanted to meet the newspaper deliverer who'd shown so much kindness to their daughter. We wouldn't meet again for another fifteen years at another dinner at her folks' house in a different city. That was it, never to meet again.

My point, as it were, is for a few minutes' bike ride I collected enough pop bottles to meet my immediate wants and then some. The digest entertained me for awhile. It cost 26 cents with tax: five pop bottles and a penny tax. It's what I call the pop bottle to pulp paradigm of marketing. Those days are long gone. Even in 1968 pulp digests were dying. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine down from a 1950s 350,000 monthly circulation high to a paltry few tens of thousands. Lower still now. The big three science fiction and fantasy digests down from a '50s high of a quarter million per issue to 10,000 or so each in recent years. These days, digital digests consider theirselves breakaway successes if they have 2,000 paying subscribers.

If the Internet could somehow reproduce the pop bottle to pulp paradigm, we'd have a Digital Digest Renaissance. Maybe it's in the aether, coming soon to a digital marketplace near you. Sorry, Amazon and the like don't quite do it for me yet.

[Holly]

I love it, Polymath. Economics aside, your story brought back a childhood memory of bikes and heat and a store with a screen door that slapped shut, a big Coke machine, and the wonderful rattle of the ice cold glass bottle tumbling down the chute. Ahhh, I can still taste that Coke.

[polymath]

Gee whiz, Holly, that's swell a simple anecdote could trigger such a vivid memory.

[Holly]

I enjoyed your story... and was hoping you would end up married to the girl who delivered the newspapers, but alas, 'twas not meant to be.

[Leila]

I enjoyed your story... and was hoping you would end up married to the girl who delivered the newspapers, but alas, 'twas not meant to be.

Ha, I too got wrapped up in the story and thought there might be some later connection (relationship wise) with the newspaper girl. Sorry, Polymath, I realize that was not quite the point you were trying to get across but you are a good storyteller so you drew me in!

[polymath]

Capital, thanks, Leila. I reserve that anecdote having a different outcome for the wish fulfillment and escapism of fictional make believe. Nonfiction is a good base to start from. There's other happy outcomes to fill in the blanks, maybe a conflated Roman à clef meld of fact and fiction that gets to the heart of a relevant truth but isn't, per se, entirely factual.

Actually, I'm leaning heavily toward that as a stong choice for my favored writing direction near term. Then readers get to decide what's fact and what's fiction as they desire for the artful mystique of dramatic irony from willing suspension of disbelief tempered by reportorial objectively reliable reporting reinforced by sincere and contrite self-effacement.