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Friday Slide Show: Master Dealer
21 April 2023
At what age do you learn how to master something? That you can't just kick a ball and it will go into the net. That you have to read the book to talk about it. That you have to pay your dues.
That you can't just point and shoot, for that matter.
Do we live in an instant reward, no-fail society now in which everyone who shows up gets a trophy? Where all the children are above average, as Garrison Keillor used to put it.
Even more frightening, are we on the way to a society where grades are given for papers written by queries to artificially intelligent engines? Where diplomas are awarded for amassing a credible trail of them. Where nothing is actually achieved.
That's what we were wondering when we stumbled upon an old gold watch. We had been looking for some colored pocket squares among the things our father had left behind. And there was this old square Bulova.
As we inspected it, we turned it over and found an inscription on the back:
Dad was a 14-year-old paperboy when he became a Master Dealer at the Oakland Tribune daily newspaper.
We knew the story, of course. He didn't just walk the neighborhood asking for people to subscribe to build up his sales. He loaded up his canvas delivery bag with a pile of papers he took to Memorial Stadium on Saturday afternoons where the University of California Golden Bears would host their rivals on the gridiron. He sold a lot of game-day newspapers to the 100,000 fans arriving there.
But there's more to the story, it turns out. And downstairs in a drawer no one ever opened, he had stored the three certificates with which the Oakland Tribune had marked his achievement.
Details. Mouse over or tap for captions.
They are, quoting from them (where "consecutive" probably meant "prior"):
First Class Dealer Certificate of Merit earned June 6, 1941 for:
Three months as Second Class Dealer
200 Yardstick Points during the three consecutive months
60 Yardstick Points for Service
45 Yardstick Points for New Orders or Transfers
40 Yardstick Bill-Payment points
12 Yardstick Points for Advance Deposit
Satisfactory Average in School Work
Ace Dealer Certificate of Merit earned Sept. 18, 1941 for:
Four months as a First Class Dealer
300 total Yardstick Points during the four consecutive months with at least 100 points in any month
85 Yardstick Points for Service
80 Yardstick Points for New Orders or Transfers
55 Yardstick Bill Payment Points
36 Yardstick Points for Advance Deposit
Satisfactory Average in School Work
Master Dealer Certificate of Merit earned April 20, 1942 for:
Six months as an Ace Dealer
100 points (minimum) each month for six consecutive months
56 Yardstick Points for Advance Deposit
185 Yardstick Points for New Orders or Transfers
90 Yardstick Bill Payment Points
Maintain Good Average in School Work
That's a lot of work for a piece of paper. Kind of like a diploma.
Lightroom Denoise. We were excited to apply Lightroom's news denoising algorithm to these ISO 1600 images but alas. The format? Adobe DNG. So we suspect the message is incorrect. More likely it's an issue with our unsupported GPU as both Lightroom and Photoshop move more processing onto the GPU.
But you also got dinner, as a 1937 clipping from the Oakland Tribute reports. The 200 or so carriers would gather for the monthly Tribune Carriers' Yardstick Dinner where the awards were given out.
The most prestigious award of the evening was always the Master Carrier which came with not just a certificate but a gold wrist watch, too.
That school work requirement was nothing to sniff at either. It had to be validated with a certificate from the school that the carrier was "well up in their class work."
Dad kept those certificates his whole life, not to mention the gold watch. There's nothing quite so valuable as meeting your first difficult challenge with achievement.
