I must confess that now that snow has fallen I remember just one of all the nights I spent as a newsboy delivering the Winona Republican Herald to customers on the west side of Whitehall. That night sticks in my memory like angel hair to a Christmas tree. 

The night? It occurred in the year that Christmas Eve fell on the same day as my Saturday collection night. The frozen ears, the bent bicycle forks, the deadbeats who left town owing me for seven weeks—all were forgotten as I set out to collect my Yuletide plunder for a year’s worth of dogged delivery.

I remember my route as well as Martin Luther’s not so Small Catechism. First, Johnsons above the post office, then north on Main Street to “Widow’s Row,” the overheated apartments above the bakery, the drugstore, the City Café, where the hallways usually smelled of sweeping compound and cabbage cooking. But on this blessed night it’s different. Smells of oyster stew, lutefisk and flotbrod baking on cast iron griddles greeted my nostrils as I strode down the dim hallways. No tips from the widows, which doesn’t surprise me. My heart beats faster as I head across Ervin Creek to Gilbertsons and Bensends. A cookie here, a quarter there. Not bad for starters. I get to Scranton Street middle class. Solid. My bag fills with boxes of Brach’s chocolate covered cherries, which I detest and will trade with my brother for two stocking caps which he received on his east side route. Also, the quarters are beginning to jingle. At Grandma’s and Grandpa’s, I earn a whole dollar which they can ill afford and a trip to the toilet (“don’t forget to put up the seat, Davey!”)

Then on to Whitehall’s Tenderloin, the Country Club neighborhood, the area where I put on the face to meet the faces that I meet, sort of a hang dog face, suggesting that watery gruel awaits me when I return to the chilly shack where my family is huddled around a lone candle. I hit the jackpot, three customers, a dollar bill at each.

Then it’s back to reality just off Main. I approach the Allen Hotel, which leans perilously toward the Texaco station. One family still lives there. The Kleppens, who hold the distinction of being the only family on the dole -- and the only one on my route that always pays me on every collection night. The door opens and Oscar, stone blind, greets me. The smell of dry rot dog urine and kerosene drifts out onto the wintry air. “You pay now, Oscar,” says his missus, “and I’ll get Davey a cookie.”

The soft anemic cookie sticks to my mitten. Oscar’s dog rides my pantleg. I bite into the cookie and hold the bitten piece in my mouth ready to spit it out when I get outside. “Here’s the quarter we owe you and a nickel for Christmas.”

“Merry Crithmuth,” say I and back out the door.

Spit out? Not on your life! I clutch the quarter inside my mitten, swallow and take another big bite as I trudge home to huddle near that last fictitious ember.

Merry Christmas and God Bless us every one!