First Job

My first real job out of high school was as a messenger boy for the Detroit News that I started in the fall of 1962. Everyday I caught the Cadillac Express bus at Harper and Coplin near our house on the east side for a five-mile ride downtown to work.

I couldn't wait to get to work, pick up my morning deliveries of advertising proofs, tearsheets and sealed envelopes and hurry back out to the streets to start my deliveries. The sidewalks were filled with people, all in a brisk walk. Bumper-to-bumper, cars inched along the narrow streets The huge buses would hiss to a stop and disgorge more people who scattered into the quickly-moving crowds. Everyone walked with determination, disappearing into the skyscrapers and department stores. Pretty girls were everywhere.

At the corners of Griswold and Fort streets and Woodward Avenue and Library, tall policemen in white caps stood in the middle of the intersections and blew their whistles everytime the traffic light changed, and directed a throng of pedestrians across the street. Most of the men wore suits and ties, and many still wore fedora hats that were still in style in the early sixties. The women wore business attire, too, with nylon stockings and heels, some even wore white dress gloves. I must have seen 5000 people every day.

And there I was, 18, and a part of it all. I knew then that no matter what I would do for a living I would always work downtown. And that's the way it turned out.

(photo of Woodward Avenue and Griswold St. in early '20s courtesy of Detroit Burton Historical Library. )