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Page 6 of 28 |
Early Exploits: |
From Kansas City to Chicago |
A typical example of a 'News butch', young
men who sold newspapers and soda pop on the
train
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Meanwhile, however, Flora, Elias and Ruth went to Chicago.
For a short time, while the man who bought the newspaper route from
Elias took a vacation, Walt became "the boss of the route," supervising
the other newsboys. He stayed with his oldest brother Herbert, Herb's
wife Louise, their two-year-old daughter Dorothy and of course, Roy.
It was Roy who came up with a great idea for Walt's summer. "Kid,"
he said, "I think you ought to go and be a news butcher. It would
be very educational for you." Of course, at fifteen, Walt was
too young for the job selling newspapers, candy and soda on the Santa
Fe Railroad. So, he simply lied about his age, and the next thing
he knew he was happily dressed in a shiny blue uniform with brass
buttons. After years of grueling work for Elias, this job was heavenly.
He visited far away places and met interesting people. And the fifteen
year old learned a little about the world. "I got to Pueblo, Colorado,"
Walt recalled, "This fellow says, 'You ever been to Pueblo, Colorado?'
I said, 'No.' He gave me a card. He said, 'Here's a good place to
stay.' He said, 'You'll like it there. You go over there and they're
wonderful people.' |
"So, I went over there and I looked this place up. When I went up
to the place, it was a house, you see? And I went up and I rung the
doorbell and this woman came to the door. . . There was a piano there
and everything. And pretty soon I heard some laughter upstairs. She
says, 'Let me get you some beer son.' So, she went out for a can of
beer. And pretty soon, down the stairs came this guy and this dame
and they were laughing and everything else. Well, I was pretty naive,
but I soon caught on to where the hell I was, you see? Then I got
out of there as fast as I could drink the beer." Unfortunately, Walt
was no businessman. He was shortchanged, and cheated by suppliers.
Once all his candy was stolen, and another time he accidentally lost
the soda bottles that he was supposed to return. By summer's end,
he forfeited Roy's $15 deposit. But Walt wasn't disappointed. He was
never really in any job for the money. Sometimes he did things for
the experience. Other times he took opportunities to create something
new. But never was the cash his overriding concern. This was why --
in later years -- his relationship with Roy was so important. After
summer's end, Walt rejoined his parents and sister in Chicago, where
he attended the McKinley School for one year -- at least physically.
His mind was generally in a million places other than school. Three
nights a week, he attended the Chicago Institute of Art, where he
got formal training in cartooning from local illustrators. He was
able to utilize that training in cartoons he drew for the school newspaper.
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McKinley High School
in Chicago
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In this drawing by Walt, a group of
men are gloating over the dead body of the
German Kaiser
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Many of those drawings displayed Walt's patriotic tendencies
and his interest in the First World War. He was hard pressed to think
about English or algebra while the world was being saved from the
forces of evil in Europe. In the words of the George M. Cohan song,
he yearned to be "Over There." His brother Roy was in the Navy, and
that only intensified his desire to be fighting on the front lines.
But Walt was still far too young for the military. So, he went to
school and helped his father at the O'Zell Company, running the bottle
washer and the machine that mashed apples. One night he unhappily
served as an extremely jittery night watchman. He was dating a young
girl named Beatrice at the time. Though history has lost all but a
few fragments about the relationship, a letter she wrote Walt, after
he had become famous, sheds a little light: "Do you remember the fun
we used to have at school?" she wrote in 1933, "Remember the night
we sat in Virginia's morris chair and told ghost stories? Remember
Humboldt Park?" The reference to Humboldt Park is cryptic; but for
generations young men and women used that dark, tree-filled part of
the city as a safe outpost for necking.
The summer of 1918, he lied about his
age and got a job with the post office. Walt had a brush with death
that summer -- but not fighting under General Pershing. The post office
in Chicago was bombed, killing four men and wounding thirty. A mailman
who worked only a couple of desks from Walt was among the deceased.
Walt had missed being in that exact spot by only a few minutes.
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Meanwhile, Walt was trying to enlist in the Army, Navy
Marines -- anyplace. But they wouldn't accept any sixteen year olds.
The Red Cross Ambulance Corps would take seventeen year olds, so that
seemed like his best shot. It only required adding one year to his
age. Walt asked his parents to sign the necessary paperwork,
and Elias refused. But Flora gave in to her headstrong son, and signed
the paperwork for both herself and Elias. Then, Walt made the necessary
changes to add a year to his age. Thus, he found himself living in
a tent near the University of Chicago, getting training in motors
and ambulance driving.
So close to being shipped overseas
that he could almost smell the gunpowder, yet another grand historical
event touched Walt's life -- the Flu Epidemic of 1918. More than 20
million people would die of the flu in those years, and Walt came
close to joining them. He was sent home, where Flora nursed him to
health -- even after she got the flu herself. They recovered, but
not in time for Walt to rejoin his unit; his friends had shipped out.
He was sent to another unit, based in Sound Beach,
Connecticut. But then, on November 11, the war ended. "We were so
darn naive," Walt recalled of his disappointment at the war's end,
"We didn't know what it meant. We just knew that we'd missed out on
something." Then, in a stroke of something that only a sixteen-year-old
could possibly regard as luck, the Red Cross shipped fifty more men
over to Europe for cleanup operations. Walt was one of the fifty,
and the next thing he knew, he was aboard a cattle boat called the
Vauban, on his way to France. |
Walt envied his brothers Roy
and Herbert, who had already
joined the military -- Roy in the
Navy, and Herbert in the newly
formed American Expeditionary
Corps
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