The following is an excerpt from The Box Boys by Paul Sherburne -
Winter of 1949
I saw snow today.
Honest, I did . . .
I think.
And I saw moose tracks out there . . .
and they're coming right this way!
My school is closed for winter recess, which means it's my time to learn to be a box boy at my grandfathers' general store. A box boy helps fill grocery orders by putting items in boxes that will be delivered to customers. . . . I'm ten years old now, and ready for what my older brother calls basic training. . . . My father said that over the next few days it will likely go below zero, even in the daytime. I was advised to pack some extra things to wear. . . . We reach the road to Brownville Junction and drive under a big, black railroad bridge that goes above the road and then over the Pleasant River. . . . My grandfather owns the Gerry Company along with two other people. . . . My grandfather's name is Frank Auril Robers, but everybody calls him Joe. He's slim, about six feet tall, and has a full head of black hair that he combs straight back with no part. He usually looks kind of serious, but I already know that behind that look he's a good-natured, caring man with a wicked sense of humor and a good heart. My grandmother, Mary, is about five feet seven. . . . She is friendly, always smiling, and particularly good with children. . . . Around the house it's Gram Rogers who seems to be the boss. In the store, Grampa Joe rules.
Driving to Town
"You come with me and bring your things," Gram Rogers says, leading me to the guest room on the second floor. The only item other than the bed and a dresser and a rocking chair in the guest room is Grampa Joe's locked gun cabinet. He is a hunter and also buys and sells weapons as a hobby, and I've seen some of his guns before. "Grammy, do you think I'll get to see his guns?" I ask. "Well, you'll have to ask him yourself," she replies. Grampa Joe likes to show us his collection, especially if he's added a new weapon or two. And he has this pair of old pistols in a fancy box that he says were used in a real gunfight – just like in the movies about the Wild West. I'm not sure if I believe him about that.
Trek to the Store
I'm wearing mittens, long underwear, wool socks and shoes inside my overshoes, two shirts and my heavy sweater, and my winter coat with the hood up but, my goodness, it's still freezing cold out here! . . . Then I think about old man Wallace, the blind guy. . . . He walks like this, trudging, all the time . . . . Maybe he feels the sidewalk with his feet. That and the tapping he does with that white cane. . . .
The rail yard is actually a real junction, because two big railroads cross each other there. . . . One of the big railroads using the Junction is the Bangor and Aroostook. . . . The other railroad is called the Canadian Pacific, and their cars are mostly bright red with white lettering. Engines unscramble and reconnect the trains when they come in from Montreal and Quebec to the west or get ready to leave for New Brunswick and the Maritime Provinces to the east. . . . And of course there's the coal dust. It is everywhere. . . . It gets past even the tiniest cracks in the windows, sneaks under doors, blows onto rooftops. . . . It gets tracked into houses, it blows through the air, and sometimes you can even feel it in your hair and in your ears. . . . I cross the street to the Gerry Company. It has a front porch with a sloped roof and about six long wooden steps that go up to a wide porch. There are two big windows on either side of the front door. . . .
Learning on the Job
Grampa Joes gives me an apron to wear. It has a strap that goes around my neck and a place for a pencil in the front panel and a pocket on one side for a notebook. . . . The first job of the day is sweeping the wooden floors. . . . Grampa Joe uses the scoop to spread the compound right on the floor all the way across the front of the store. Then we each take a broom and start sweeping the sawdust down the aisles. . . .The oil in the compound helps keep the wood floors looking good, collects all the dirt and dust, and makes everything smell better. . . .
Uncle Frank pulls open the inside sliding door to the small storeroom, and he and I go into the dock, which is freezing cold. . . . In just a few minutes – all the while shivering, he shows me the kerosene barrel and how the pump works, and the molasses barrel and how its pump works. . . . Uncle Frank explains that there are special customers for the kerosene that the box boys serve, and that's the brakemen and linemen from the railroad. Those men all carry a lantern that uses kerosene for fuel, and when they stop in the Gerry Company on their way to work to buy cigarettes or things for their lunch pail, they will look for us to top it off for them.
Piles of Boxes
Frank and I return to the warm store and he points to a stack of boxes just inside the sliding door. "The first thing we have to do is check everything against the list of contents. . . . He is not only counting the items, to make sure nothing is missing, but he's also watching out for damage, such as dented cans or packages that might be torn. . . . A short time later, we complete the restocking chore. . . . After we've put all the products on the shelf, we take the last of the empty boxes back to the cellar stairs. . . . With his foot, he quickly slides the boxes through the cellar doorway where they fall down the stairs into the darkened cellar. . . . At the bottom of the stairs, to the left, is a room-sized bin containing nothing but empty boxes. . . . The furnace is an oversized green metal monstrosity, in front of which there's a top-loading hopper with an automatic feeder mechanism coming out of it that supplies fresh coal to the firebox. . . . "Your job is to bring all empty boxes down here and make sure they get into that bin," Uncle Frank says. "Don't let them get all over the basement. Any that are torn or not usable, you can cut up and stack flat onto that pile over these."
The register is a large, round-topped wooden cabinet with a metal hand crank on one side. There's a window-like thing at the top, where you can see the price that's entered for any item. Grampa is always drawer 'A,' and Uncle Frank is always drawer 'B.' . . . Box boys, like me, are directed to use 'A' – Grampa Joe's number. . . . I spent most of the rest of the morning running to the basement for empty boxes, putting up orders (taking items from the shelves and putting them in the boxes along with a carbon copy of the sales slip), and arranging them on the floor near the inside entrance to the dock.
Daily Business
Just after the store opens for business at 8 'clock, deliverymen begin arriving with fresh bread, milk, eggs and other dairy products. . . . These men are well known at the store and visit every day, bringing with them news and gossip. . . . Another man brings the daily supply of the regional newspaper and takes time to check on the magazine display to see if any items need updating. . . . At about 10 o'clock, the lady from the Post Office (Marvel Harshaw, the Postmistress) stops in for her daily visit, bringing with her the store's mail, and separately Grampa Joe and Gram Rogers' personal mail. . . . Gram Rogers has lunch all ready for us when Grampa Joe and I arrive back home at noon. . . . I'm not sure how she does it, but everything she makes - - her scrambled eggs, her molasses cookies, and especially her chocolate doughnuts, taste better than anyone else's, even my own mother's! . . . It seems that most of the customers come to the store sometime between 9 and 2 o'clock (a pattern closely related to the time when school is usually in session, I am informed, and from mid-afternoon on activity in the store noticeably slows. . . . Uncle Frank gets a box of whole chickens from the cooler and brings them to the chopping block behind the display case in groceries. His cutting and chopping tools are already sharp, but he takes time to hone the edges using a sharpening rod (you could hear the shlip. . .shlap. . .shlip. . .shlap from across the room) and give them a last wipe with a clean rag before cutting the chickens into pieces and lining them up on trays to put in the display case.
Grampa Joe looks over the items on the shelves behind the counter and makes up a list of items to order from his wholesalers and distributors. These people all live and work in the city of Bangor, about an hour's drive away to the south, and Grampa Joe visits them every other week – usually on a Thursday. This time of year, of course, his buying visits are sometimes altered due to the weather and travel conditions. Uncle Walter gathers up the papers Uncle Frank used when he and I processed the last delivery and did our restocking. He takes them to the office and organizes them in his file called payables. He'll keep busy this afternoon, writing checks to pay for earlier deliveries, and he'll probably also prepare some overdue payment letters to some of our customers who are behind on their credit accounts. Angie keeps busy straightening up stacks of blankets and piles of towels, or rearranging the clothing items that she keeps on hangers according to their size or maybe color.
Final Chores
Before we leave for the day, I'm sent on two errands. In one case I deliver a box of hardware (nuts and bolts, and screws) to a local auto repair shop a short distance away from the store, and in another case I pick up a bag of medicine from the drugstore to put in with one of our delivery orders. . . . Wednesday I'll be going out with Uncle Frank in the delivery van to deliver all the orders we've been preparing. . . . But whether its spending the day helping Uncle Frank deliver groceries to people's homes here in town, or a day riding up into the mountains in old Louie's Model A Ford to deliver mail and groceries to someone like old Sarah Green at the Katahdin Iron Works, there is always adventure to be found.
My realization is, "We know when we are touched by writing about youth because it takes us back to our feelings and thoughts at that age, and especially to the words we used to use."
* Paul Sherburne, The Box Boys (Seattle, WA: Wilson Duke Press, 2013)