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26 YOUTH
ture industry, I seem to have begun practicing very early, in partnership with my chum and next-door neighbor, Davey Goodman. He and I engaged successively in at least three commercial projects. In all of them we had lots of fun and some profit.
A lemonade stand was our first venture. It usually stood between the two cedar trees in our front yard, close enough to the sidewalk to make it difficult for passers-by to escape our insistence. At one cent a glass this was about as painless and polite a form of holdup as two small boys could perpetrate. But it was only a tune-up for our more businesslike ventures.
For the life of me I can't remember how the sign painting started, but it lasted two or three years. The signs were painted on barns and fences in the neighborhood of Sullivan whenever we could talk farmers into the advantage of letting us advertise in nice bright colors the clothing that could be bought at Sol Goodman's store. Davey's father was the principal clothier in town and a lifelong friend of our family. At times this selling and painting campaign made school look like an avocation. The barns and fences near the old swimming hole in Buck Creek were painted almost solid!
The third job— printing— was a bit more professional. It was really a concession. Davey and I, with the unspoiled enthusiasm of our years, persuaded the officials of the county fair to give us the right to produce and sell the programs for the afternoon races and other daily events. Each day of the fair we had to ride out in the morning on our bicycles, get the entries for that afternoon, and ride back as fast as we could to get the lists to the printer. The entries went in the center of a four-page program already set up, which gave general information about the exhibits, an index showing in which building each exhibit was to be found, and advertisements of the local firms, the latter given to us as much because of our fathers as because of our persistence.
One day, riding pell-mell back to the fairgrounds with our racing sheets, my front wheel hit a big dog running across the road, and I took a header. When I came to in Dr. Hinkle's office, my only concern was what had happened to the programs.
One other occasional job was in quite a different categorv. I won my spurs as an organ pumper at our little Presbyterian church. In those days organs had no electric motor. A long handle, like that on an oldfashioned pump, had to be moved up and down hard enough and often enough to keep up good air pressure, indicated by a little gauge. Dwight McTir, the not too decorous son of the minister, was chief organ pumper and I— a little younger and small then, as always— was not quite up to steady labor at this distinguished job. But, being ambitious to qualify, I did my turn and still have in my possession a little membership card in the esteemed Guild of Organ Pumpers.