Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Los Gatos Weekly-Times file photograph

Hard work paid off for these five Los Gatos paperboys who earned a trip to Disneyland as a bonus.

Picture from the Past

John S. Baggerly

Mal Held inspired many enterprising paperboys

As part of a "Little Merchant Plan" for boys delivering the Los Gatos Daily Times during the 1950s there was an opportunity for carriers to earn bonuses for their industriousness and responsibility.

Driver of the station wagon in today's picture was circulation manager Mal Held, a streetwise San Franciscan who instigated the plan to reward bicycle-mounted carriers of the five-day-a-week newspaper published on Royce Street.

Little Merchants delivered to subscribers on their route, collected money monthly and solicited new subscribers. Periodically, top carriers were rewarded with free tickets to places such as county fairs and local theaters. Disneyland was a grand prize.

By chance, former carrier Jack Hartman was in Los Gatos recently with his daughter, Heather, visiting his mother, Melda Hartman, at The Meadows. Hartman is a sales manager for a Sacramento television station and continues to enjoy bicycling.

Hartman, whose memories include representing the United States in bicycling during the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, recalls "boxing" his newspapers in a shed at the rear of the Times building.

"Held showed us how to fold and tuck the paper into an almost square package that could be thrown from a moving bike to a front porch," he recalls. Hartman's love of bike riding started early. His leg speed made him a top sprinter in elementary and high school. His bike racing included formal competition at the Velodrome in East San Jose and a Northern California junior title.

His talent brought him into competition with Bob Tetzlaf, a Southern California junior champion. They later became fellow Olympians in Rome. If the Tetzlaf name sounds familiar, it's because next month he enters his 37th and final year as a fifth-grade teacher at Daves Avenue School. Bob and his wife, Orione, started the annual Cats Hill Race in 1975--she naming the event and he setting the course, which includes a tough climb up the Nicholson Avenue Hill.

Hartman recalls while visiting his mother, herself a former front office person at the Daily Times, that U.S. Olympians of all sports formed a social circle in Rome. That's how Hartman and Tetzlaf became acquainted with swimmers Chris Von Saltza, a Saratogan and Los Gatos High School student along with Olympian Lynn Burke, her house guest and fellow LGHS student. Both were members of the powerful Santa Clara Swim Club, hatchery of many Olympians.

The Daily Times was founded by publisher Lloyd E. Smith, who designed and owned the Royce Street building and lived upstairs. Co-owner was Pat Peabody, who resided in the Glen Una area. He was a member of the Peabody coal family of Chicago and became knowledgeable of newspapers while a reporter for a San Jose newspaper.

Held, a San Francisco resident, participated in a men's cooking club in that city. It was the most democratic of clubs--the love of cooking brought together judges, hotel clerks, laborers and men of many other professions. Held also proved his cooking ability at newspaper staff parties. He was considered quite a catch, and that's just what staff member Mary Andrews did after she became widowed.

It's impossible to say how many former carriers, now in middle age, recall Mal Held and his Little Merchant Plan gratefully.

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