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Page 6 of 28 Early Exploits: From Kansas City to Chicago

News butch

A typical example of a 'News butch', young men who sold newspapers and soda pop on the train

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. .
McKinley High School

McKinley High School
in Chicago

Drawing by Walt

In this drawing by Walt, a group of men are gloating over the dead body of the German Kaiser

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. 
.
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.
Roy

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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