MACK, IF YOU READ THIS, I'LL SWEAR IT'S A LIE!

McComb was a town of 12,000 people in 1939 which means there were about 3,000 houses. Did you ever try to walk to 3,000 houses and put a grocery circular in the screen door handles? I was supposed to.

When I was in the 9th grade, I fell head-over-heels in love with a girl named Marilyn Mitchell, who was also in the 9th grade. She had blond hair and blue eyes and was very attractive. It was another one of those "love her at a distance" romances. She never knew of my feeling for her.

Marilyn's parents owned a grocery store on Third Street between the City Hall and the Five Point Service Station. She had an older brother named Mack who was a senior in high school. One day I heard that Mack was looking for a boy to help deliver circulars on the upcoming Saturday. Thinking this would be a good way for me to meet the dream girl and lead to great things, I volunteered for the job. Mack said, "All right. Be at the store at 5:00 AM Saturday."

I looked forward to Saturday with great anticipation. Maybe Marilyn and I would ride in the back of the truck, and I could show her how I could hold my breath for more than three minutes! Or maybe she would bring my lunch and we could have a picnic in the park!

Saturday morning found me waiting outside the store at 5 AM as promised after walking the mile from my house on Seminary Street. Getting up early in the morning has always been easy for me. All I have to do is set my mind the night before for the time I want to get up and BINGO! My eyes pop open.

Mack opened the door from the inside. The family lived in the building some place, but no matter how hard I looked, there was no sign of Marilyn. Mr. Mitchell had 6 bundles of circulars on the floor by the cash register. Mack and I took the bundles out and put them on the truck. I became aware of a delicious odor in the air and it was coming from the candy counter. There were some small candies in a jar marked "Coffee Candy." The smell was so good that I promised myself to get some at the first opportunity.

We drove across the overhead bridge to East McComb and began our distribution of circulars. Mack parked the truck near the beginning of a street. He told me to take one side and he would take the other. We walked up the sidewalks and across the lawns, walking onto porches and putting rolled-up circulars inside screen door handles. It was not yet day.

Some houses had dogs in the yards, and they all barked. This started a chain reaction with dogs barking long after we had disappeared from sight. In some houses there would be lights on, and every now and then an unseen occupant would call out, "Who is it?" I knew that if I answered "Billy Crittenden," the person wouldn't know any more than he did before, so I decided to answer, "Me!"

That first street was a long one, Locust Street, I believe. The last house was a farmhouse, which sat a long way back in a field. We had taken enough circulars with us so that we could go over to the return street by way of a street running at right angles, and deliver ads all the way back to the truck.

The work went well. We finished East McComb by 10:30 AM and then drove to North McComb. In some areas the streets were arranged in rectangles, and the plastering went easy; in some areas, however, Mack and I got separated as he followed a diagonal or circular drive one way, and I went the other. As soon as he got out of sight, I dumped the handful of circulars I had in a sewer and went back to the truck to wait for him. I looked at all the bundles we had left with a sinking heart. I was so tired already I could hardly pick up my feet and we had covered less than one third of McComb.

That was one of the longest days I had ever spent. The afternoon was filled with endless streets of houses in Central and South McComb.

Time after time, Mack and I would start off together, and I would contrive to fall so far behind, or I would take a cross street as if to deliver circulars in the next block and when out of Mack's sight, I would dump my ads. Then I would go back to the truck, take out more sale papers, and go out and dump them.

After dark, the circulars FINALLY ran out. As we rode back to the store, I began to figure how much I was going to get paid. Gone was all thought of a cute blond Marilyn. It was too much to hope for $5, because that would have been generous even for a man. Surely, $2.00 was about right, and that's all I needed to get my .22 rifle so Charles Emmett and I could go hunting squirrels next week.

At 8:30 PM we went into the store. My head was drooping; Marilyn could have been on the counter dressed in a grass skirt dancing the hula and I would have only seen the three nickels Mr. Mitchell put on the counter for me. I pushed the nickels back and said, "Coffee Candy, please."

Mr. Mitchell counted out 15 pieces of dark paper wrapped candy from the big jar and put them in a paper sack. I didn't say anything and he didn't either. I took the candy and walked out of the store. Before I got to the fire house on the corner, I had unwrapped a piece and had it in my mouth. I didn't drink coffee and didn't know what to expect in taste, but it was bitter and didn't taste like candy at all.

I spit it out, threw the bag into the ditch, and walked back home, a sad but wiser boy.