The Cold

Life began for me when I started to understand the rudimentary dimensions of my relationships with the people around me.

That process began very early on a bitter cold winter morning. It was January, 1954 and it was the kind of cold and very deep snow we don't seem to get anymore in New York. Shivering, shaking violently at times, I was barely able to mount my bicycle. The skin on my face was numb and stinging from the beastly temperatures augmented by the icy wind. I was never, ever, that cold again.

I was also the paperboy. I delivered the bleat of the press to the local unwashed and unawake at dawn every day. I sold the now extinct Mirror, Herald Tribune, Journal American and Newark Star Ledger along with the survivors, the New York Times, the Post and the Daily News. Sunday's were always hard even in good weather. I had struggled for hours in the dark and cold to assemble the sections of the enormous Sunday editions. I still had thirty eight deliveries to make before seven and could carry only one of the monstrous tabliods at a time on my bike since there was no way I could yet afford a basket or a shoulder bag. My weekly take from my route was $5.15 including tips.

This may not sound like much but it was far better than the 25 cent allowance my parents gave me for washing the dishes, walking the dog, taking out the trash, mowing the lawn, shoveling the driveway and washing my father's Desoto. So I quit my parents (or at least tried to) and took up delivering papers. My parents acutally left me alone about the chores after a while, secretly, I think, happy to have a seven year old son who would never again ask them for money; a son who bought his own clothes, paid his own bus fare and for his own music lessons and instruments.

It is true that the man who ran the paper routes; who delivered the large wire bound bundles of papers to me for sorting and delivery, would scream, grab me, shake and threaten me with dismemberment and worse if my deliveries were not done by seven. Compared to my father, he was a pussy cat.

I was just on my way with the huge New York Times for Mrs. Riggilio who lived almost a mile away, a formidable distance in this weather on my wobbly old two wheeler that was actually an amalgamation of several bikes I'd found discarded at the local dump. I remember that I could not get my short arm completely around the heavy paper as I struggled to stay erect on the slippery, snow covered driveway.

Just as I cleared the sidewalk, I went down, hard. The paper hit the ground with me and spread out like a wind blown deck of cards. Nearly exhausted, I crawled after it on my hands and knees, sobbing, tears freezing on my seven-year-old face. I looked up at my parent's row house and saw my mother staring out at me, her pretty face and dark hair perfectly framed in the unfrozen oval center of one of the frosted casement windows.

Hope lifted me for the last time, warmed me for a few fleeting moments. She would come, she would help me, she would show me that she loved me. Her eyes made direct contact with mine for a long moment, and then she was gone. She vanished.

I listened for her voice calling out to me. There was only silence. I waited for her to come down to me. I was left alone.

I raised myself to my feet. I felt a new kind of chill that's never left me. I delivered my papers.