puddle, while Harry stood by and laughed.
Harry could not help but admire Bing’s resourcefulness. His high-school jobs during summer and holidays included — in addition
to lifeguard and caddy —postal worker, boxing usher, grocery-truck driver, woodchopper at a resort, and topographer at a lumber
camp.
And he still came up short. Delbert Stickney, whose family lived down the street, often went to the movies with Bing. Delbert’s
mother worked in a department store downtown, and the boys regularly stopped by her counter to bum change for the show. When
he visited the Stickney home, Bing would sit in the parlor, singing and pecking a song on the piano with one finger while
cradling Delbert’sbaby niece Shirley on his lap. In 1948 Shirley’s daughter suffered an attack of polio and could not afford treatments. Hearing
that Bing was stopping in Spokane, Mrs. Stickney went to his hotel and asked for a loan. “No, I won’t loan it to you,” he
told her, “but I’ll give it to you. All the quarters Delbert and I borrowed from you including interest must be close to that
amount.” 32
For a boy characterized as lackadaisical, Bing had a peculiar affinity for early-morning jobs he could keep throughout the
school year. As delivery boy for the
Spokesman-Review,
he rose at four to collect the papers. His whistling and singing carried far in the quiet Spokane mornings as he pedaled
his bike from house to house. Occasionally a neighbor raised a window and warned him to keep it down. In 1938 he wrote Charles
Devlin of the paper’s promotional department, “I hope all my boys may start as carriers. I want them to be workers.” 33 All his brothers had routes, he noted, and the girls filled in when the boys were sick. “Of the bunch, I probably developed
the least desire for labor… but the whistling experience came in mighty handy.” 34
No amount of work could compromise Bing’s belief that he was by nature lazy. If indolence was part of the professional Crosby
charm, it figured privately as a source of penitence. As Seneca wrote and Bing learned to recite in Latin, “Nothing is so
certain as that the evils of idleness can be shaken off by hard work.” The habit of rising early came naturally to him. He
roused himself on cold winter mornings when it was dark and warmed his hands over an oil drum, waiting for the papers. After
delivering them, he had breakfast at home, served mass (if it was the third week of the month), and attended school. One of
Kate’s friends told Bing about an open position for morning janitor at the Everyman’s Club on Front Avenue, a flophouse for
transient miners and loggers in the heart of skid row. Bing applied for the job and was hired. For a buck a day that winter,
he layered himself in wool clothing and after delivering his papers took a streetcar across the river into downtown Spokane,
arriving at five. For the next hour, he tidied the facility, maneuvering around the drunks and layabouts, learning about canned
heat (which, liquefied into its alcoholic content, caused blindness and madness) and powdered tobacco and other comforts of
the lower depths. He was back home for breakfast by seven, except on days he had 6:30 mass.
Kate proudly described him as “prompt, methodical, sticks to his plans and sticks to his word.” 35 She bristled at the notion, promulgatedchiefly by Bing himself, that he was idle. “My children were brought up to do for themselves and from the oldest to the youngest
they still do. Anyone who works with Bing, for instance, knows he rarely sends or asks for things. He just quietly goes and
gets it for himself.” 36 Later, in Hollywood, he was known for his entourage of one, Gonzaga classmate Leo Lynn. A butler whom Bing hired in his most
baronial years — at the insistence of his second wife — mistakenly assumed Crosby didn’t like him, as he wasn’t permitted
to pack or carry his employer’s suitcase
Harry could not help but admire Bing’s resourcefulness. His high-school jobs during summer and holidays included — in addition
to lifeguard and caddy —postal worker, boxing usher, grocery-truck driver, woodchopper at a resort, and topographer at a lumber
camp.
And he still came up short. Delbert Stickney, whose family lived down the street, often went to the movies with Bing. Delbert’s
mother worked in a department store downtown, and the boys regularly stopped by her counter to bum change for the show. When
he visited the Stickney home, Bing would sit in the parlor, singing and pecking a song on the piano with one finger while
cradling Delbert’sbaby niece Shirley on his lap. In 1948 Shirley’s daughter suffered an attack of polio and could not afford treatments. Hearing
that Bing was stopping in Spokane, Mrs. Stickney went to his hotel and asked for a loan. “No, I won’t loan it to you,” he
told her, “but I’ll give it to you. All the quarters Delbert and I borrowed from you including interest must be close to that
amount.” 32
For a boy characterized as lackadaisical, Bing had a peculiar affinity for early-morning jobs he could keep throughout the
school year. As delivery boy for the
Spokesman-Review,
he rose at four to collect the papers. His whistling and singing carried far in the quiet Spokane mornings as he pedaled
his bike from house to house. Occasionally a neighbor raised a window and warned him to keep it down. In 1938 he wrote Charles
Devlin of the paper’s promotional department, “I hope all my boys may start as carriers. I want them to be workers.” 33 All his brothers had routes, he noted, and the girls filled in when the boys were sick. “Of the bunch, I probably developed
the least desire for labor… but the whistling experience came in mighty handy.” 34
No amount of work could compromise Bing’s belief that he was by nature lazy. If indolence was part of the professional Crosby
charm, it figured privately as a source of penitence. As Seneca wrote and Bing learned to recite in Latin, “Nothing is so
certain as that the evils of idleness can be shaken off by hard work.” The habit of rising early came naturally to him. He
roused himself on cold winter mornings when it was dark and warmed his hands over an oil drum, waiting for the papers. After
delivering them, he had breakfast at home, served mass (if it was the third week of the month), and attended school. One of
Kate’s friends told Bing about an open position for morning janitor at the Everyman’s Club on Front Avenue, a flophouse for
transient miners and loggers in the heart of skid row. Bing applied for the job and was hired. For a buck a day that winter,
he layered himself in wool clothing and after delivering his papers took a streetcar across the river into downtown Spokane,
arriving at five. For the next hour, he tidied the facility, maneuvering around the drunks and layabouts, learning about canned
heat (which, liquefied into its alcoholic content, caused blindness and madness) and powdered tobacco and other comforts of
the lower depths. He was back home for breakfast by seven, except on days he had 6:30 mass.
Kate proudly described him as “prompt, methodical, sticks to his plans and sticks to his word.” 35 She bristled at the notion, promulgatedchiefly by Bing himself, that he was idle. “My children were brought up to do for themselves and from the oldest to the youngest
they still do. Anyone who works with Bing, for instance, knows he rarely sends or asks for things. He just quietly goes and
gets it for himself.” 36 Later, in Hollywood, he was known for his entourage of one, Gonzaga classmate Leo Lynn. A butler whom Bing hired in his most
baronial years — at the insistence of his second wife — mistakenly assumed Crosby didn’t like him, as he wasn’t permitted
to pack or carry his employer’s suitcase
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