Retirement Still Around Corner for Newsboy, 87 . . . Read All About It

They named me Leslie when I was born. I was too young to argue.

--Leslie Lewkowitz

Welcome to Leslie’s world that was.

Corner of Pico and La Cienega. Not Restaurant Row Cienega. Just Cienega-Cienega, where they pump gas, sell fruit, cash checks, buy papers. Catch buses.

The buses cross the intersection, north-south, east-west, vice-versa. Nobody seems to get off the bus at Pico and La Cienega. Just on. The buses leave behind only a mephitic montage of grit-colored clouds, clouds that settle into the walls and sidewalks in a minute or two, leaving the neighborhood the color of Yonkers in January.

Nobody really lives on Pico and La Cienega, unless you want to count the pigeons. Pigeons will live anywhere.

Weeds Live--and Thrive

And the weeds, the weeds that grow through the sidewalk cracks and sustain the pigeons with their seeds. The pigeons, in turn, spread the seeds, and the weeds live, and thrive, on Pico and La Cienega.

Not the people, though. People used to live around the intersection, 40-50 years ago. “Sporting people,” it is said. Not any more.

They drive through now, or walk--many more on foot than you’d expect to see anywhere in Los Angeles. They almost hurry, too; not hurry the way they do in Yonkers but in that semi-determined way that in California passes for purpose.

And they stop--again, more people than you’d expect--to buy their newspaper on the corner: The Times, the Herald Examiner, the Santa Monica Evening Outlook. Lately--within the last five years or so, as the world turns--La Opinion and Noticias del Mundo.

And the Daily Racing Form. The Form has always moved pretty well on Pico and La Cienega. Well, not always. Only since time--or Leslie--began, whichever came first. Some of the old-timers are not quite sure.

“Leslie’s always been here, selling his papers,” says a woman with gray-blue hair, clutching a Herald Ex in one hand and a shopping bag in the other. (Paper, not plastic. The old-timers always opt for paper.)

“Longer than those gas stations,” she says. “I’ll tell you that. Leslie’s always been here.”

“Ain’t been but 43 years on this corner,” Leslie Lewkowitz says. “It’s as good a corner as anywhere else. Better than most of what’s left for a newsboy.”

“But I ain’t always been here. Far from it. I’ve been sellin’ papers since I was 16. You figure it.”

You do figure it, and he’s right, of course. Less than half his life on the corner of Pico and La Cienega. Leslie being 87 and all.

Still, it’s been a while, and Leslie’s clothes, like everything else, have turned the color of Pico and La Cienega. The working clothes are a dun-gray that’s worked its way down to the shoes and up to the fingernails. Put in a 12-hour working day, 6 to 6, out on the sidewalk and you’re going to get gray. It’s a law of nature, like the pigeons and the weeds.

(Leslie’s stepping-out clothes, though, are something else-- clean, colorful, just the right side of sharp. Ask the restaurateurs the length and breadth of Pico. Ask Leslie’s girlfriends. . . .)

“There was a time,” Leslie says, “when they wouldn’t let me on the corner without a tie. Shoes shined, the works.

“Hell no, it wasn’t the circulation managers insisted on a tie. The Times--been selling it since ‘21--The Times wanted you to be neat, sure, but they weren’t all that fastidious.

“It was the sports wanted me to dress up just so, or they wouldn’t give me their business. Here they were in tuxes--tails, even--in the neighborhood, sashayin’ by until well after midnight, and they didn’t want no bums on their corner.

“Yeah, I stayed till maybe 1, 2 in the morning then. I’d go down to The Times and get the last edition, the one with the latest sporting results. They’d send a kid around, or drop by for the paper in one of them big Caddies or Packards. . . . “Different neighborhood then. Big houses, lawns. Before they put the units in. Different people, too. Not better people. I’m not sayin’ that at all. Just different. Sportier, I guess you’d say.

“The gamblers, the movie people down from the studios on Washington Boulevard, the big bosses. They was all my customers. The paper would sell for a nickel, they’d give me a quarter. Trouble was, the paper’d go up to a dime, 15 cents, they’d still give me a quarter.

‘A Man Has Pride’

“Not that they were cheap. Just didn’t pay attention to the price. And I wasn’t gonna tell ‘em. A man has pride.

“When the paper went up to a quarter, there went the tips. ‘Course, by that time, there went the neighborhood, too.

“No, I don’t mean it that way. It changed, is all. People got busier. It was gradual.

“People used to stop and kibbitz. Don’t have the time now, it seems. Except the blacks. That’s who I kibbitz with most these days. They have the time, it looks like. And the inclination. And the fun. . . .”

He bounced around some, Leslie did, until he settled down to a steady job, at the age of 16.

Dad was from Germany, Mom from Poland. Dad was a restless man, always out to make a fortune, couldn’t hold onto one when he made it, which was seldom.

“He’d come by the newsstand,” Leslie recalls. “Maybe I hadn’t seen him in a long time. Give me a hundred-dollar bill. Hell no, not for me. He’d say, ‘Hold this for me. I may need it some day.’ Always did, too.

Leslie did a little time in an orphanage in Atlanta. “Mother was sick, my two brothers in school, my father off somewheres. Not a bad place. I’m leavin’ ‘em $500 in my will.”

Fetched up semi-permanently in Kansas City. Sold papers in the morning, then after school. Then instead of school.

‘That’s the Way He Is’

“I had permission to leave at 2 p.m. The principal called me in one day, said I had to stay after school. Something about algebra. I told him I had papers to sell. He went to the house, told my mother. She told him, ‘Leslie’s gonna do what he’s gonna do. That’s the way he is.’ She was right, too.”

Leslie permits himself a small, sly smile, then tosses his cigarette to the sidewalk and grinds it out. So much for principals.

And cigarettes. Leslie smokes during his business day, not steadily but regularly.

“Got in the habit in K.C. Truck comes by my corner, drops off two huge cartons of Camels. Guy on the sidewalk tells me, ‘The kid didn’t show. You want to pass these out? It’s a promotion thing. Give you $5’--big money in those days.

“I give ‘em out, have 17 cartons left over. Guy says, ‘Keep ‘em.’ So I started smoking. I was 16.

“Later, maybe 30-40 years, I go to the doctor. He says, ‘Lewkowitz, you oughta stop smoking Camels. Bad for you.’ So I did what he told me.

“I stopped smoking Camels. Switched to Tareytons.

“I feel good, sleep good, eat good. Tomorrow is tomorrow. I ain’t gonna worry about it.”

Leslie Lewkowitz doesn’t worry about much. Doesn’t talk much, either. Keeps his counsel. Cagey, some would say. Always been that way.

Makes his living at the newsstand--$125 a week, give or take, “plus the Social Security. It’s enough. I don’t have that many expenses. I ain’t complaining.”

It used to be a lot more, what with one thing and another. Before the freeway ate into business. Then the television. (“People pass by, read the headline, then rush home to see it on TV. Can’t learn nothin’ from TV. Oughta read the papers, but they’re in too big a hurry.”) Then “those damned vending machines.”

And then, over chicken cacciatore at Anna’s on Pico, his favorite meal, favorite restaurant, Leslie lets the shades down. Just a little.

It was after the Lewkowitzes had moved to California in 1921 that Leslie developed a little sideline--or brought it along from K.C., who knows?

First, though, the family tried opening a deli at 7th and Alvarado. “My mother and I put up the money. I’d saved from K.C., about $4,000. My father was back with us for a while then. No money, but always ideas, he had. The deli wasn’t big enough, he wanted a restaurant. So he talked us into leasing the place next door for $500. We didn’t last long.

“Pretty soon he took off again. Poker, craps, you name it.”

For Leslie, it was back to the corners--”I could always make a buck on the papers; I always came back to it”--and the one or two other little things the young Lewkowitz had developed a taste and talent for.

“I bought the corner of 6th and Figueroa for $250,” Leslie says. “That’s the way you did it in those days. You paid for the spot. Later I was at Wilshire and Catalina.

Corners for $75,000

“One day--45-50 years ago, who remembers?--a guy comes out from Chicago. He owned four corners there, good location. Doctor told him climate’s gonna kill him, so he sells his corners for $75,000. That’s right, $75,000.

“First thing he does out here, he looks me up. Hands me a certified check for $10,000. Says, ‘I wanna take over your corner.’

“Well, I could’ve arranged it with one of the newspaper guys, but the other guy was too honest. So I kept the corner.

“What it was--well hell, I was bookin’ horses at the time. OK, I did it for quite a few years. They used to fine you $25 and let you go. I stopped when they made a felony out of it, though why they did God knows. People are gonna gamble. . . .

“Anyway, the captain in charge of the vice squad then, my book used to give him a $10 bet every day for free. Worked out fine, nobody got hurt.

“One day I got a telegram from Chicago, where they appreciated the captain. They said, ‘Give him this one for us, this horse. He’s a superb mudder. The mud’s over his ankles, he can win anything.’

“Naturally, the captain got track odds. Hell, he was head of the vice squad. He tells me, ‘That horse runs up the track, I’ll run you in.’ It paid 96 to 2.

“Well, right after that, all the vice-squad guys wanted tips. I told ‘em, ‘How can I get ahold of you guys, you’re ridin’ around out there.

Surrounded by Vice Cars

“So they start coming by --can you believe it?--and nobody gonna make a bet with the corner surrounded by vice cars.

“The captain solved the problem. When the cars were on the way, he’d call and say, ‘Somebody’s sick in the family’ and everybody would lie low for a little while.

“Like I say, it was different in those days. Looser. Guys would come up for a paper and we’d cut the cards, double or nothing.

“Nah, I don’t do that any more. Shoot a little craps, maybe, but bookin’ the horses? No more.”

That’s what he says, and you have to figure the guy’s 87 years old, you gotta believe him. . . .

Somewhere along the line, when he was 58, Leslie married a woman called Naomi, who died eight years ago.

“I had too many women,” he says, “no time to get married. She came around the newsstand every day. Finally I dated her up and she moved in and the next thing you know she wanted to get married. I didn’t want to, but she nailed me.

“She wanted to boss me, and that didn’t work out too good. Now she’s gone, and that’s OK. She watches over me.”

So Leslie sells his papers on Pico and La Cienega and kibbitzes a little, and walks over to the cars that stop on the corner and brings the drivers the papers.

And lends money to people he knows and won’t even change a $10 bill for those he doesn’t. (“I don’t flash my money around.”) And waits until he has to leave his corner, after 43 years.

The building behind his stand--a furniture store, a grocery store--is coming down, starting this week, to make room for a new upscale cluster of shops. Construction will take six months. Leslie will take a vacation. Maybe retire. Maybe not.

Not a Worrier

“Couple of places I want to go,” he says. Atlanta, to see his old orphanage. A place in Upstate New York that takes in sick animals and then finds places for them. “Just want to see it, is all. Just curious.”

He wouldn’t mind seeing Ireland, either. (“I’m Jewish, but I grew up among the Catholics in Kansas City. They’re my favorite people.”) Maybe Holland--”I’ve seen pictures; it looks pretty”--maybe not.

“It depends,” he says. “Retirement depends, too. Depends on which gives out first, me or the savings account. Like I say, I ain’t worrying about it.”

He’s not a worrier. No time for regrets, either, for might-have-beens.

“Maybe I could’ve done something else, maybe not. I tried a few other things, but there was nothing to compare with the freedom of the corners.

“I like to be my own boss. I don’t like people telling me what to do.”

Leslie puts out a last Tareyton and starts out of Anna’s restaurant, very much under his own power.

By the door, he stops to chat with the manager, lowering his voice a little. “The seven horse and the three horse in tomorrow’s double,” he says.

Out on Pico and La Cienega, the newsstand is locked up now, but the buses go by, north-south, east-west, and the pigeons keep pecking at the weeds growing out of the sidewalk.

Tomorrow? Tomorrow is tomorrow.