Laughing Through Life

By Larry Moran

This hilarious book invites you to sit down and share dinner with the Morans, a family of ten children, and after dinner to share in the familys pranks and crises. You will walk the streets of Carmel, Indiana, a quiet, small town, visit its shops, and meet its neighborly people. Along the way, you will learn what it was like growing up in a large family in a small town during the 1950s and 1960s. Whimsical and, at times, knee-slapping tales guide you through childhood, teen years, early adulthood, and beyond. You get a peek at family dynamics and the struggles of an insecure boys first encounters with romance. You also learn what it was like to be a journalist, a government economist, a parent, and a golf fanatic. The stories are warm, touching, and always funny. The people you meet, mostly based on the authors siblings, are friendly and fun-loving. The situations, based on real events and family lore, will keep you laughing. The author helps you see life through humors prism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jul 29, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504924696

Larry Moran

Larry Moran was born in Indianapolis and grew up in Carmel, Indiana. He was a newspaper reporter in the state for nine years, covering everything from sports to presidential politics. In 1971, he moved to the Washington, DC, area, where, for thirty-three years, he was an economist, public information officer, and media spokesperson for a federal government agency. Mr. Moran previously published a collection of eight short stories of terror, suspense, mystery, humor, and surprise. He is currently working on two novels and a collection of his poetry. He is an avid but awful golfer and a tournament bridge player. His other interests include American political history, the history and culture of the American West, baseball, music, and magic.

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© 2015 Larry Moran. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse   07/29/2015

ISBN: 978-1-5049-2468-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-2467-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-2469-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015911850

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1    Growing Up In Indiana In A Family Of Ten Children

Chapter 2    Mom Saves A Tree

Chapter 3    Howard Sees An Alien From Outer Space

Chapter 4    Keeping Carole Out Of Poverty

Chapter 5    My Life Of Crime

Chapter 6    Building Kenny’s Temper

Chapter 7    No Lawyers In The Family, Please

Chapter 8    Hoosier Hysteria

Chapter 9    Love Is A Many-Spooky Thing

Chapter 10    Don Mcdonald Declares His Love

Chapter 11    The Magic Of Christmas

Chapter 12    Wings

Chapter 13    David Appleby And The English Crumpet

Chapter 14    Media Star

Chapter 15    Brother Danny Makes A Speech

Chapter 16    Avoiding Disaster

Chapter 17    Wilderness Adventures

Chapter 18    The Dead Zone

Chapter 19    Back To Journalism

Chapter 20    Do You Have Information On The Economy And Pigeons?

Chapter 21    My Work Junkets

Chapter 22    Sitcoms For The Gods

Chapter 23    Defending America

Chapter 24    Fix-It-Yourself Fever

Chapter 25    The Golf Trip

In loving memory of Mom and Dad,

who taught me to laugh

With sibling love for Carole, Howard, Ken, Gail,

Peggy, Kathy, Shawn, Dan, and Jim,

who learned laughter with me

And with love for Helga, Amber, Shane, Mike,

Dallas, Madison, Mickey, Tyler, and Nathan,

who share laughter with me

Introduction

Life is funny. At least most of the time. We don’t always see the humor in things when they happen, but often when seen in retrospect, they are hilarious. Whether or not we recognize the humor usually has to do with our attitude and outlook. I choose to have a positive attitude and to look at life through humor’s prism. Mostly, we shouldn’t take life or ourselves too seriously.

If there’s anything that will show you just how funny life can be, it’s growing up in a family with ten children, as I did. That experience allows you—actually, it forces you—to see that you are not the center of the universe and that the things you do and say don’t have as much importance as you might otherwise think. You and your siblings will do and say things that are silly and amusing and survive it. When your sister Kathy does a funny thing, you and your other eight siblings will laugh heartily. That seems fair. And when you do something a little crazy, your nine siblings will laugh. That also is fair. To survive in a large family, you must learn to laugh at yourself.

This book is not an autobiography, even though it deals with much of my life. It’s a celebration of my family. Basically, it’s a fictionalized story of growing up in a wonderfully large family in a wonderfully small town and of working as a journalist and for the federal government.

Whenever we’re together, my siblings and I enjoy retelling many family stories. Although this book is a fictional account of my family’s life during my youth, nearly all the family anecdotes and many of the stories are true and are part of our family’s lore. I have written them as I remember them happening or as I remember them being told to me. However, in a family of ten children, most incidents are remembered in ten different ways. Fortunately for you, dear reader, my memory of those events is closest to the truth. One, two … or nine of my siblings may disagree with my versions of the family legends, and I sympathize with them, but I’m sticking to my guns.

Much of what appears in this book really happened. For example, my mom did convince a road construction crew not to cut down a tree, and my dad did set our backyard on fire trying to kill weeds. The chapters Growing Up in Indiana in a Family of Ten Children, Mom Saves a Tree, My Life of Crime, Magic of Christmas, Media Star, Avoiding Disaster, Wilderness Adventures, My Work Junkets, Sitcoms for the Gods, and Defending America are essentially true stories. Only small parts of these stories are fictionalized.

The chapters Love Is a Many-Spooky Thing, Don McDonald Declares His Love, David Appleby and the English Crumpet, Dead Zone, Back to Journalism, Do You Have Information on the Economy and Pigeons?, and Fix-It-Yourself Fever are largely fictional stories loosely based on real events. Characters in these stories, other than family members, are fictional and are not based on real people.

The chapters Howard Sees an Alien from Outer Space, Keeping Carole out of Poverty, Building Kenny’s Temper, No Lawyers in the Family, Please, Hoosier Hysteria, Wings, Brother Danny Makes a Speech, and The Golf Trip are completely fictional stories, although real family anecdotes are included. Nonfamily characters in these stories are fictional and are not based on real people. My sister Carole was offered a scholarship by the Herron School of Art and Design in Indianapolis, but our family didn’t conspire to keep her from going. Sister Gail was never romantically involved with a law student, so we didn’t have to try to end that romance. Of course, had she ever had such a liaison, we would have taken steps. Our family didn’t have to build Kenny’s temper. His temper came naturally. And my brother Danny never chauffeured for me during a speaking tour, but he was very shy and hated making public speeches.

It’s been said that if you want to find facts, read nonfiction, and if you want to find truth, read fiction. The stories in this book, both real and fictional, provide a realistic picture of what it was like growing up in a large family in a small town during the 1950s and 1960s. More importantly, they introduce you to the wonderful members of my family.

Perhaps I’ve been blessed with a life filled with amusing incidents. But it’s more likely that I’ve learned from my mother, father, sisters, and brothers an outlook on life that allows me to see the humor in the things that happen around me.

Whichever it is, I’m fortunate enough to have been laughing through life.

I hope this book helps you do the same.

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Here is the Moran clad (Mom is expecting Jimmy) at our aunt Joyce’s house in Beech Grove, Indiana, in 1957.

Chapter 1

GROWING UP IN INDIANA IN A FAMILY OF TEN CHILDREN

I grew up in Indiana—at least that’s where I spent my youth. My wife claims I still haven’t grown up. She’s probably right, and I’m proud of it. I have a really old body and face, but my mind, heart, and soul are young.

Several things played important parts in my life. Let me begin by saying that sex, crime, vast family riches, political power and corruption, and international intrigue—that is espionage—played no part in my life whatsoever. Well, sex did, once. Not mine, but that of my parents when they conceived me. Actually, they didn’t conceive of me, or they might not have had sex that time.

Carmel, Indiana, where I spent much of my youth, could have been the setting for the movie A Christmas Story. One freezing winter day, I licked a metal pole—don’t ask me why, because I don’t know—and my tongue stuck to it. It hurt a lot. No one said I was a smart kid. My father had one of those lamps shaped like a woman’s leg. Actually, that was my lamp when I was seventeen years old, and I still have it.

Small towns are great because the gossip keeps you up on all the mischief involving everyone in town. Unfortunately, because we were the largest family in Carmel, much of the gossip was about us.

Growing up in a family with ten children was like being in a large litter of puppies around feeding time. There was great chaos and a good deal of pushing and shoving trying to get food, but when dinner was over, there was plenty of loving playfulness and happiness.

I am the second oldest in a family of ten children, six boys and four girls: Carole, me, Howard, Kenny, Gail, Peggy, Kathy, Shawn, Danny, and Jimmy. The fact that there are ten children in our family should tell you that my mother and father weren’t entirely sane. And we didn’t have a large family because my parents were Catholic. Our large family was the result of my mother’s poor hearing. Every night when they went to bed, my father leaned over and whispered in my mother’s ear, Do you want to go to sleep or what? Not hearing well, she frequently answered, What?

We were as normal as a family of twelve could be. Mom and Dad played games with us—like Uncle Wiggily, Sorry, and canasta—and helped us assemble jigsaw puzzles on our dining room table. Once Dad bought Howard, Kenny, and me a Lionel electric train set but insisted that he be with us when we used it. He said he didn’t want us to electrocute ourselves or set the house on fire, but we suspected he enjoyed playing with the train set as much as we did.

Our first house in Carmel was quite small for a family our size. It had three floors—a basement; the first floor with a living room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom, and two bedrooms; and an attic, where Howard, Kenny, and I slept. Mom and Dad had one of the first-floor bedrooms, and Carole and Gail shared the other when we first moved there. Before we moved from the house, Carole shared the bedroom with Gail, Peggy, and Kathy, and infant Shawn’s crib was in Mom and Dad’s bedroom. We clearly had a full house.

In 1955, we moved diagonally across the street to our second Carmel home. This house, one of the oldest in town, had been built in the late nineteenth century. Much larger than our first home, it had four levels—a basement; a first floor with a living room, dining room, TV room, kitchen, a bathroom (of sorts), and only one bedroom where our parents slept; a four-bedroom second floor where all us kids slept; and an attic. The attic was used primarily for storage, but it also was the home of the family ghost, Mr. Fisher. I’ll talk more about Mr. Fisher later. The house’s exterior was made of cut stone, and its interior walls were made of plaster. The backyard was smaller than that of our first home, but it too had a swing set, and we played baseball and football in the backyard. Because the house was much larger than the previous one, it better accommodated our large and growing family.

Like other families, we had pets, dogs mostly. Our first pet and my favorite was a mutt named Ginger, with a lot of golden retriever in her. She was sweet, gentle, and as good a friend as a six-year-old boy ever had. Another family favorite was Foxy. Foxy was also a mutt, but he had fox terrier blood.

A family pet we didn’t like was King, a large, fearsome, and at times vicious dog that Dad had bought from a man for ten dollars. Perhaps Dad thought King would provide protection for our family. If so, things didn’t work out as he expected. King frightened the man who delivered fuel oil to our house, so the man sprayed him with oil and refused to deliver oil to our house unless King was tied up or penned. King also frightened our postmen, milkmen, bread men, and other people who weren’t members of our family. Even we kids were afraid of the dog. We tried keeping King in the basement, but that wasn’t a long-term workable solution. Nor was it fair for a dog of King’s size to be cooped up like that. Finally, Dad returned King to the man who had sold him. The man wasn’t thrilled to get the dog back, so Dad had to pay him to take King off our hands. Dad, who didn’t like spending money, was pretty unhappy that he had to put out money to get and then to get rid of King.

That wasn’t the only time Dad had trouble with a dog. Once his father—our grandfather—went on a trip and asked Dad to watch his old hound dog. Dad brought the dog home along with a bag of dog food he had found in the shop area of our family’s electrical-contracting business. The hound didn’t like the dog food, but he ate it. There’s little wonder that the dog didn’t like the food. It turned out to be cement mix. Fortunately, the dog didn’t die.

While he didn’t always deal well with dogs, Dad knew how to handle the demands of ten children. On many summer Sunday afternoons, we all piled into our car—a sizable, copper-colored Plymouth station wagon—and took drives just for the fun of it. Motoring down country roads, Dad accelerated as we zoomed over hills, giving us kids a thrill. Do it again! we’d holler, and he would. Most of those drives ended in Noblesville, the Hamilton County seat, located some fifteen miles northeast of Carmel, at a Blue Ribbon Ice Cream Shop, where we all got an ice cream cone. Dad had learned early on the problem he would face if he asked each of us kids what flavor of ice cream we wanted, so as he stepped from the car to order our treats, he would simply ask, What flavor of orange-pineapple ice cream does everyone want? Without waiting for answers, he’d go to the window and order cones with two scoops of orange-pineapple ice cream for everyone in the family. No one complained, because we all liked orange-pineapple ice cream and enjoyed the family outing.

A drive over bumpy country roads was the setting for another family story. Late in 1943, when Mom was very pregnant, Dad wanted to ensure he got a tax exemption for the coming baby. So Dad took Mom for a ride in the country, where he made sure to fly over every hill in the road. His ploy worked. I was born on December 28 of that year.

When we moved to Carmel in 1951, the town had a population of five hundred people. For a few years, the population never changed. Whenever a baby was born, some man had to leave the town.

Carmel was a quiet little town. On most nights, there wasn’t a person on the streets. You might wonder if Carmel had a town curfew. Well, at one time it did, but most people in town complained that the nine o’clock curfew whistle woke them, so the curfew was suspended for a couple of years.

Surrounded by farmland, Carmel had a grain elevator on its western border, where locally produced grain was loaded onto trains. The town had only one traffic light, and its business district—or downtown, as we called it—consisted of a bank, a pharmacy, a grocery store, a dime store, and a barber shop. McMahan’s Market was one of those old-fashioned types, where you presented a list to the grocer behind a counter and waited while he gathered and bagged or boxed the requested items. Actually, Carmel wasn’t that quiet on days when Mom sent my older sister, Carole, and me downtown to the grocery store, because we pulled behind us our little red Radio Flyer wagon, which was sorely in need of oiling. We squeaked and rattled four blocks to the store and back, all the while neighbors were saying to other neighbors, There go the Moran kids downtown to the grocery store.

Downtown Carmel also had a pool hall—a shabby, dark, and mysterious place that stood across the street from the grocery store. We kids were told that only bad people went in there, and we were forbidden from even looking in or walking on the sidewalk in front of the pool hall. If it was necessary to pass the pool hall, we were to cross the street before doing so to avoid being corrupted by close proximity. These exhortations scared us, and we gave the pool hall a wide berth.

Two churches—a Methodist and a Friends, or Quaker—were located within a couple of blocks of the downtown area. Both were social as well as religious centers of the town, and families didn’t segregate themselves along religious lines.

Although peace and quiet mostly reigned in Carmel, there were times when chaos broke out. One summer afternoon, someone tied one end of a rope to a metal kitchen chair and the other end of the rope to a donkey named Pookoo and then set him loose. The sound of the chair clanging loudly behind him frightened Pookoo, so he ran wildly through the streets of town. We Moran children knew the donkey was running out of control and thought he had gone mad, perhaps with rabies. We also knew Pookoo had a chair tied to him but thought that was an accident or that someone had tied the chair to Pookoo in hopes that the donkey would pull him or her but had then fallen off the chair and fled when Pookoo had run wild. We kids ran inside our home to hide from the mad donkey, until finally someone caught Pookoo and freed him of his burden. So the incident of the crazed donkey ended without anyone getting hurt, and Carmel returned to its state of sleepy little town.

With the charm of Mayberry, Carmel would have made Opie, Aunt Bea, Andy, and Barney feel at home. Its streets were lined with maples, oaks, elms, and willows, and though narrow, the streets were well maintained, as were the yards that surrounded mostly modest homes in the town. In the spring and summer, Carmel was mostly green, but in the fall it was on fire with yellow, orange, and red.

Floyd’s Barber Shop (in Mayberry) could have been modeled after Buck’s Barber Shop, which eventually expanded to three chairs, in Carmel. In our teen years Howard, Kenny, and I got our hair cut there, and it was where the town’s men gathered to gossip, a bit about local happenings and politics but mostly about Carmel High School’s basketball and football teams.

When we first moved to Carmel, we rarely used Buck’s Barber Shop. Our dad didn’t like to spend money, and one way to avoid it was by cutting his sons’ hair. That he did. But when he was done, we looked as if he had put a cereal bowl over our heads and snipped around its edges with a pair of scissors. It looked like that because that’s what he did. At some point, Mom took over the haircutting task. By that time, Howard and I were old enough to complain about how our hair looked and how the hair down our backs itched. Mom tried to modernize her haircutting methods by buying a device that was part comb and part razor blade. The concept was that as Mom combed our hair, the razor blade cut it, and the comb made the cutting even. With the new implement, our heads didn’t look like we’d gotten the cereal bowl treatment, but our haircuts were still far from professional, and as the razor blade dulled, it pulled our hair out as much as it cut it. Ouch! I started spending some of my newspaper-route money at Buck’s Barber Shop, but Howard was less willing to spend his money on a haircut. Like Dad, Howard didn’t like spending money, so Mom continued to cut his hair. Once she attempted to give Howard a Hollywood burr haircut—short all over the head with a little bit of bangs in the front that he hoped to comb into a curl at the top of the forehead. Mom did her best, but the next day when Howard was on his Indianapolis News paper route and stopped at Buck’s Barber Shop to deliver a newspaper, Buck gave Howard a hat to wear when he left, saying, "We can’t have you leaving here and people thinking you got that haircut from us." Howard was embarrassed, but Mom laughed and told the story for more than fifty years.

The Carmel First National Bank sat prominently in front of Carmel’s only traffic light at the intersection of the town’s two main streets, Range Line Road and Main Street. Next door to the bank was another of Carmel’s important institutions, Brown’s Pharmacy. This was where residents bought medication, magazines, bobby pins, Band-Aids, and hundreds of other items not available at the grocery store. Brown’s also had a soda fountain counter and several booths where folks could refresh themselves with sodas or ice cream desserts on a hot summer day. Teenagers occasionally populated the counter or booths, but Brown’s was not a hangout for them.

Our neighborhood was quiet at night but teemed with kids during the day. In addition to our ten, there was a full complement of neighbor children, including Fred Doerr, Carol and Steve Hinshaw, Brian and Brent Peak, Joe Wodock, and Dave and Glenn McManama. They were our best friends and the ones with which we most often played, but there were others. Dave Cooper, who lived near the McManamas, was only a year older than me, but he didn’t spend much time with us, because he didn’t think it was cool to hang around with younger kids. He did play in some of our basketball and baseball games, though. He was a good baseball player and later played on Carmel High School’s baseball team. But what we most remembered about him was a different talent. Dave was revered by neighborhood kids for his belching. He could belch on command, hold a belch for a long time, and even talk and belch at the same time. My brother Jimmy developed a comparable talent in his adult life.

Not all kids in the neighborhood were our friends, and one in particular was disliked by all the other neighborhood kids: Charlie. Joe Wodock was Howard’s age, and he had a brother who was Kenny’s age. Joe and Howard were friends and played games in which they pretended to be Davy Crockett, Superman, cowboys, and other heroes. Charlie, who lived behind the Wodocks in an upstairs apartment that was above a dentist’s office on Range Line Road, was an obese bully. Because of the proximity of his home, he targeted the Wodock boys more often than the Moran boys, but we weren’t excluded from his abuse. All the neighborhood kids wanted to stop Charlie’s bullying, but he was so large and mean that none of us could take him on alone. So late one afternoon, several of us—Joe Wodock, his brother, David McManama, Fred Doerr, Howard, and I—concocted a plan that we felt would do the trick. If Charlie started bullying Joe or his brother that afternoon, we would join together to give Charlie a beating that would discourage him from future aggression. Just before Charlie was expected to show up, David, Fred, Howard, and I hid in the window wells around the Wodock house. According to our plan, if Charlie started bullying one of the Wodock boys, those of us hiding would jump from the window wells and lay into Charlie. As expected, while Joe played in his backyard, Charlie arrived and started harassing him. Joe was about to give the signal to attack when my sister Carole arrived in the Wodocks’ yard and yelled, Larry and Howard, you have to come home for dinner, now. Charlie was stunned when David, Fred, Howard, and I magically appeared from the window wells. He didn’t get a beating that day, but he did get the message. He went home and didn’t bother the Wodock brothers or any other neighborhood boys quite as often as before. So the Moran gang in Carmel worked for good without using violence, while the Moran gang in Chicago worked for evil. Eat your heart out, Bugsy.

When I was in junior high school, the Mincers moved next door to us with their son, Billy, who was my age. Some years before, Billy and I had been in the same Cub Scout den pack, and his mother was our den mother. At the time, the Mincers lived a couple of miles south of Carmel on Range Line Road. I usually rode to and from meetings with another Cub Scout and his mother, but one afternoon I had no ride home, so Mom drove to the Mincers’ house to pick me up.

When Mrs. Mincer answered the door, Mom introduced herself by saying, I’m Larry’s mother.

I’m glad to meet you, Mrs. Mincer replied. Larry is a really well-behaved boy.

Stunned, Mom said, "No, I’m Larry Moran’s mother. It seems that Mom couldn’t understand how her son Larry, who loved to tease and pull pranks, could be described as a really well-behaved boy."

On Saturday mornings in the early 1950s on our twelve-inch Muntz television set, we watched kid shows like Kukla, Fran and Ollie; The Howdy Doody Show; The Little Rascals; The Pinky Lee Show; The Soupy Sales Show; and Bozo the Clown. By late in the decade, we had a twenty-one-inch Philco and were watching cartoons like The Bullwinkle Show, Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw, Rocky and His Friends, Rocky Jones, Space Ranger, Ruff and Reddy, and The Woody Woodpecker Show. There were other children shows like The Big Top and Mr. Wizard and many, many adventures shows.

Saturday night was bath night in the Moran household. Carole was lucky because she always took a bath alone. For the rest of us, baths were community affairs. Howard, Kenny, and I shared baths together until I was in junior high school, when I was allowed to take a bath alone. Then Howard and Kenny took baths together, as did Gail, Peggy, and Kathy and Shawn, Danny, and Jimmy. By the time we were in high school, each of us took several baths a week, and when possible we took showers. Scheduling time in the bathroom was always a problem. I won’t even mention the problem of running out of hot water.

Like most boys in their preteen and early teen years, Howard and I had bicycles. We used them to run errands for Mom, to visit friends who didn’t live in our immediate neighborhood, and for just the thrill of riding. One of Indiana’s biggest annual events was the Memorial Day Indianapolis 500-Mile Race. Drivers raced specially designed cars for two hundred laps around a two-and-a-half-mile oval track. Living in central Indiana as we did, it was impossible not to get caught up in the excitement surrounding the race, even though none of us were race fans at any other time of the year. On Memorial Day, we listened to the start of the race on the radio, and then Howard and I went outside where we had our own race on bicycles around the block on which our house sat. Two hundred laps seemed too many, but we peddled fifty laps around the block, or until we got bored. Then we hung around the house and listened to the race’s conclusion.

Howard and I also used our bikes on our newspaper routes. Being the oldest, I had a route first, but Howard soon followed. At first we delivered the Indianapolis News, one of two of Indianapolis’s afternoon dailies. Later we had Indianapolis Star routes. The Star was Indianapolis’s only morning daily and Sunday newspaper. We never delivered the Indianapolis Times, the other afternoon daily that also had a Sunday edition, although I worked in the Times’ sports department for three years after graduating from high school. There were two customers for whom I particularly didn’t like delivering papers, because both had vicious dogs. One of those families insisted that I put their papers inside a screened porch where they kept a poodle. That poodle bit me several times as I reached in to put the paper on the porch. While his bites hurt, I never felt the poodle endangered my life. The same couldn’t be said for a large dog owned by a family that lived on Range Line Road across from Kay’s Flower Shop. That large dog was usually in the family’s fenced-in backyard or in the house, but on one occasion as I approached the house to deliver a paper, the dog charged through an open gate and tried to attack me. Fortunately, I was able to keep my bike between me and the dog, but I was badly frightened and wasn’t sure how long I could ward off the animal. After a couple of minutes of heart-pounding excitement, the dog’s owner, a woman who had heard the commotion, came out of the house, grabbed the dog, pulled it into the backyard, and closed the gate. I felt as if she had saved my live.

When I moved into the eighth grade, I gave up my Indianapolis News route because its afternoon delivery would have interfered with my baseball, basketball, and football team practices. Instead I got an Indianapolis Star morning route, which meant getting up as early as five in the morning so I could be done delivering papers in time to go to school. Since we Moran children were in bed by nine each evening (eight until we were teenagers), getting up early didn’t bother me. The Star route didn’t interfere with my sports activity and had the added benefit of having sixty-five customers, nearly twice as many the News route. Though it took longer to deliver and required Sunday delivery, the Star route produced more than twice as much income, which was important as I bought sports equipment and some of my own clothes and shoes.

Sunday newspapers were too large to carry in a shoulder bag while riding a bike, so I piled them in our red wagon and pulled it squeaking and rattling through the streets of Carmel, as I had years before when fetching groceries for Mom. As the stack of papers in the wagon got smaller, I was able to put my right knee in the wagon and use my left foot to push the wagon like a scooter. This allowed me to move faster, which was very important on cold Indiana winter mornings. Many times, I delivered newspapers in below-zero temperatures, and on very cold mornings, Mom, concerned for my well-being, got up and walked with me as I delivered my newspapers. One Sunday morning, the temperature—the temperature, not the windchill factor—fell to twenty below zero, so Mom got up to help deliver my route. As we pulled our little red wagon through the icy streets dispensing large stacks of newspapers, comics, Sunday magazines, and advertising supplements, Mom felt I wasn’t moving fast enough, so she threatened, Larry, if you don’t hurry up, I’m going home and letting you deliver the papers yourself. I moved faster.

At any time of year, weather could be unpleasant for paperboys. It was difficult to impossible to use a bike for delivering newspapers when a foot or two of snow covered streets and sidewalks or when Carmel was covered in ice. In pouring rain, we had to make deliveries without our newspapers getting soaked. We didn’t have plastic bags for the newspapers in those days, so papers had to be put inside screen doors, in porches, or in mail or newspaper boxes. If deliveries weren’t made or if the papers were ruined, customers wouldn’t pay. But during summer or winter, rain or snow, I was faithful to my route, and it taught me a work ethic that benefited me the rest of my life. I realized that if I didn’t deliver the papers, I wouldn’t get paid. But mostly I got up early every morning and spent more than an hour delivering papers because of what my Dad had told me before agreeing to let me have my first newspaper route. He said, Larry, if you agree to do something, do it. If you don’t, your word will mean nothing, and people won’t trust anything you say.

Although I never minded getting up and delivering papers, I didn’t like collecting fees from customers. Each Friday afternoon (except when there were ball games) and Saturday morning, I went to the houses where I delivered papers through the week and asked for payment—thirty cents for Monday-through-Saturday delivery and another ten cents for the Sunday paper. Most customers were friendly and paid willingly, but a few refused to answer the door even though I could hear them inside. Or if they answered the door, they told me they didn’t have the money. Right, they didn’t have thirty or forty cents.

Howard had more trouble getting up early in the morning. In fact, many times during the summer months he didn’t get his newspapers delivered until well after seven. And on occasion during the school year, he would get up too late to deliver all his papers before school and would hide the remainder behind the couch and go off to school. Mom got a few telephone calls of complaint from customers and told them truthfully that to her knowledge Howard had delivered his papers and gone to school.

Howard disliked collecting money even more than I did, and occasionally when a customer got several weeks behind in payment, he offered me half of the money if I collected it. This was remarkable because, as I mentioned earlier, Howard was close with a dollar—actually, Howard was close with a nickel—so making such an arrangement with me proved how much he disliked collecting from difficult customers. It wasn’t easy, but I usually managed to get his money for him, and Howard and I split the reward.

It’s insufficient to say Howard was tight with money. He left his fingerprints on any coin and bill he touched. If I borrowed money from him in those early teen years to buy baseball cards or to finance a date with a girl when we were in high school, I had to pay him back two or three times as much as I borrowed.

Another example of Howard’s tightness with money was hair oil. In our teen years in the late 1950s and early 1960s, boys used hair oil to craft their hair into styles like ducktails or waves or simply to keep unruly hair in place. Howard had a pronounced cowlick that needed taming, but he didn’t want to part with money to buy hair oil, so if he could do so without detection, he used mine. If that wasn’t possible, he used Mom’s Crisco cooking oil instead. On hot days, Howard virtually sizzled. He also used Crisco to oil his bike so he wouldn’t have to buy bike oil from the hardware store. Though it had nothing to do with saving money, on occasion Howard ate Crisco by the spoonful. He could have done a commercial on the many uses of Crisco cooking oil.

When we were in our early twenties, I fixed Howard up with a date, and when it was time to pick up our dates, Howard suggested that we wait an hour so the girls won’t expect us to buy them dinner. After that we dubbed him Howard the Lady Killer because any girl who went out with him was likely to starve to death.

Vicious dogs and customers reluctant to pay their bills were only two of the issues related to delivering papers. Occasionally, women came to the door in various stages of dress and undress. Some were young; some were not. Some were attractive, and others were not. Regardless of how attractive they were, a teenage boy was always a bit embarrassed or, more accurately, didn’t know where to look so he wouldn’t create a problem.

Kenny had an Indianapolis News route—the same route I had first had—for one year, but he found that he was eating and drinking most of his profits in candy bars and soda, and he didn’t like the work involved in delivering newspapers and collecting money, so he quit.

On every fourth or fifth Sunday, our family drove to Grandma and Grandpa Donahue’s farm near Morristown, Indiana. It was a small farm, some ninety acres, where they raised hogs and grew feed corn. When they first moved to the farm in 1949, they lived in an old farmhouse that had no indoor plumbing. There was a pump to draw well water and an outhouse behind the farmhouse. Going to the bathroom was never nice but was particularly unpleasant on cold winter days. Within two years of moving to the farm, Grandpa and Grandma built a new house with running water and indoor plumbing. Green-apple trees graced the front and side yards, and Grandma often had us grandkids gather apples from the trees so she could bake apple pies.

Although we enjoyed going to the farm, the nearly two-hour trip between our house and our grandparents’ home seemed eternal. The trip to the farm was always a bit easier than the trip home because there was something fun to look forward to and there were familiar places that marked our progress. Towns like Fountaintown and Morristown and a restaurant named the Copper Kettle told us when we were getting close to the farm. The trip home was more arduous. It was often made in the dark of night without markers to tell us how close we were to home. Our questions of Are we almost there? were always met by our dad’s No, but we’re making progress. Besides, we were tired and anxious to get home.

One thing I enjoyed on the trips home was lying on the car floor and sleeping. The humming sound of the tires on the road was hypnotizing and helped me snooze, making the time pass. Once after falling asleep, I awoke, perhaps because we hit a bump in the road, about halfway home. Howard and Kenny were sitting side by side in the seat just above me and were bickering about something minor. This gave me an idea for a devilish prank, something that always appealed to me. Surreptitiously, I reached up and simultaneously pinched one of Howard’s knees and one of Kenny’s knees. It was dark, so no one saw me do it, and as I had planned, each of my brothers thought the other had pinched him. They began to push, shove, hit, and shout at each other. Dad soon tired of the fight and reached into the backseat, slapped the quarreling brothers, and told them to settle down. Howard and Kenny each felt the other had started the fight and were angry that they had been punished unfairly. I went back to sleep, pleased that my plan had worked, and I was careful not to reveal my part in the event until years later.

On another trip home after visiting our grandparents’ farm, Dad was driving a little too fast—not uncommon for him—just outside Fort Benjamin Harrison. A policeman pulled him over for speeding. Shining his flashlight into our car, the officer was stunned to see ten children. He asked Dad, Are all these children yours? When Dad assured him they were all his, the policeman said, In that case, sir, I’ll give you a warning this time, but try to drive a little slower. Dad said he would, and we were sent on our way. Afterward, we kids teased Dad—gently, of course—that we had saved him a speeding ticket and fine.

One of the highlights of each year was the July Fourth cookout hosted by Joe Fields, a Moran Electric employee. The tables in the Fields’ backyard offered an incredible amount of food—hamburgers and hot dogs that had been cooked on an open grill, baked beans, macaroni and cheese, potato salad, green salad, and lots of corn on the cob that had been cooked in aluminum foil on the grill. We kids loved watching Mr. Fields eat corn on the cob. His teeth worked like an electric typewriter, pecking away at a row of corn from one end of the cob to the other, and when corn on that row was gone, he shifted the cob like a typewriter to a new line, and it was back to the beginning of a new row of corn where the process began again. Chomp-chomp-chomp-chomp-chomp-chomp went the teeth from beginning of a row to its end as we stared in fascination. We could almost hear the typewriter bell binging as Mr. Fields shifted his typewriter-like teeth to the start of a new row. Chomp-chomp-chomp-chomp-chomp-chomp, bing, chomp-chomp-chomp-chomp-chomp-chomp, bing. The process continued until the cob was bare. The whole process took only seconds. One year