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Page 4 of 28 Early Exploits: From Marceline to Kansas City

Disney House on Bellefontaine 

The Disney House on Bellefontaine 
in Kansas City

Flora and Elias rented a house in Marceline, so the children could finish their school year. In the summer of 1911, the family moved to Kansas City, Missouri. When they first arrived they rented some rooms, a couple of blocks from an amusement area called Fairmont Park. Built by Arthur E. Stilwell, a railroad baron, Fairmont Park was an enchanting fountain-filled, colorful place with a dining room that sat six hundred and a lecture hall for two thousand. It was far enough from downtown Kansas City that visitors had to use Stilwell's railroad to get there. 
       But for Walt and Ruth it was a short walk away; and a source of endless frustration. As Ruth recalled, "It was a fairyland that you couldn't get into. All the fencing around it was white. . . We never dreamed there could be such an interesting looking place. Walt and I used to go there and peek in all we could. But we didn't get in, ever. . . and then we moved away." It's probably no coincidence that the boy who couldn't afford the admission to fairyland as a child would spend most of his adult life creating fantasies for others -- notably Disneyland. 
To be sure, as much as Marceline was a place of magic for Walt, Kansas City was home to exhausting reality.  Elias counted on Walt and Roy to work for him on his newspaper route; a job very distant from the lot of modern suburban newsboys. In fact, Walt's descriptions of his newspaper work sound like something from out of Dickens. He was awakened in the middle of the night to deliver papers for two hours before school. Afternoons, he took on the same task for another two hours. He had few toys, and "there would be kid's toys out on these big porches. . . .I'd go up and put my paper bag down and go up and play with these . . . wind-up trains. I'd sit there and play all alone with them . . . Then, I'd have to run like the dickens to catch up." Meanwhile, rising at 3:00 or 3:30 in the morning, he was desperate for a little more sleep. "I'd say, if I could just lay down for five minutes, if I could just lay down for five minutes, you know?".
Newspaper boys

In Kansas City, as in many other
big cities, newspapers were often
delivered by very young boys 
 

Walt and Walt Pfeiffer

Walt and his Kansas City pal,
Walt Pfeiffer

 

Elias insisted on quality work -- every paper had to be delivered behind the storm door. So, as Walt told the story, "I remember those icy cold days of crawling up these icy steps. . . crawling up and slipping and sliding and crying you know? Crying - I was all alone, I could cry. There was nobody around. I was so darn cold, I'd slip and I could cry, so I cried." In his six years delivering papers, Walt had four weeks off. Two weeks were for a trip the family took to visit relatives. The other two were when he accidentally jammed a horse shoe nail hidden by a chunk of ice into his foot. Of course, Elias wasn't paying Walt anything for his labor. And while he was willing to provide money for educational experiences, he was disinclined to part with pennies for the little pleasures of life that Walt craved; little toys, candies, and movies. So, Walt picked up odd jobs during his few free hours. He ran deliveries for the drug store and worked in the candy store during recess. He sold newspapers on the streetcar, after he had finished his regular route. Elias confiscated the cash he earned selling those papers, so Walt secretly ordered another fifty papers a day, which he sold without his father's knowledge.
This childhood experience developed a work ethic in Walt that would wear out all but the sturdiest of staff members. He rarely slept a full eight hours. He was never content with anything less than the best he could do and was impatient with workers who didn't give 100% of their effort. "I've been a slave driver," he admitted, "Sometimes, I feel like a dirty heel the way I pound, pound pound." At home, however, he was a very different man. Of course, it's impossible to know if he was thinking about his own arduous childhood as he raised his daughters, Diane and Sharon. But it's abundantly clear that he believed that their childhood should be a time for fantasy, for play and education. While he was stingy with praise at the studio, at home he was most generous. "If I was in a play, no matter how bad I was, he'd say, 'You did a great job, kid," recalled Sharon.
     The exhausting job of delivering newspapers left Walt with little energy for school. In fact, his entire formal education -- which was to end after only one year of high school -- was a peculiar mixture of sleep-walking indifference and occasional spurts of brilliance that surprised all around him. Many days, he could barely stay awake. His grades were often  poor. One teacher arranged the children's seats according to their intellect. In what must go down in history alongside Albert Einstein's famously mediocre school career, Walt was placed in a chair near the back door; the teacher had labeled him the "second dumbest" in the class. To make matters worse, he had to repeat second grade when he arrived in Kansas City (teachers there didn't think Marceline had provided a sufficient education). He had started school late in Marceline, and as a result, he was older than most of the other children in his class, doubtless a humiliation. 

Benton School

Benton School in Kansas City

 
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