Sunday, January 10, 2010

Old Times at Lerner Newspapers

In a former professional life, I worked for Lerner Newspapers. In my early days there, I was in charge of the kid newspaper carriers. Oh how I miss those days (ummm no).
We actually had a budget at that time. We probably had too big of a budget actually. We had various contests for our carriers. One such contest had a SportMart shopping spree as a prize.
Early one Saturday morning, Louie (I think he was still in college and only working part-time) and I met a couple kids at the local SportMart. We decided to have a little fun by wearing our Bash Brothers (self-portraits) tshirts. It was our goal to have that tshirt appear in the Lerner Newspaper.
Our tshirts were curiously popular at Lerner. It seemed that everyone wanted one, although we could never figure out why. It was like our little joke, but everyone wanted to be included. So naturally, we had to push it to the next level. We had to get the shirts pictured in the paper.
The picture below appeared as is. Unfortunately, I don't have the actual newspaper ad which detailed the event and featured this picture, but I found the old picture.
I love this picture because Louie and I look so young (well, we were so young, 20-24 or so). I love this picture because the carriers had no idea why we were wearing that shirt or what our real agenda was. Mostly I love the picture because we got it in the paper!
This was one of the earliest efforts by the Louie-John team. Little did we realize that 20+ years later, we'd still be a self-employed team...and still plotting!

Louie Atsaves (far left), 2 newspaper carriers and me (standing) in SportMart in Chicago, IL-late 1980's.

4 comments:

Rod (Padrographs) said...

From 1972-1975 I was a carrier for the Oregonian in Eugene. We never had cool contest like that. But I made some good friends on my route.

Rina said...

You look like a baby! But what's so funny is that I thought it was going to be like really about Lerner .... but it was about YOU! You are such an egomaniac! When will it end....lolololololol

Rini Cateralla

Johngy said...

Rod-
I am surprised you didn't say you were a carrier for Lerner. It seems everyone else was at one time.
Rina-Yes, all about me and it will end when I end it. But thanks for stopping by.

sue corbett said...

Anybody know a kid who's still delivering newspapers? I am in search of them. Please forward this link to my very humble contest:

bit.ly/BeWyy