Issue 13.14
The time was December 1936 that two eleven year old boys were neighbors on the 400 block of South Idaho Street of Butte, Montana. George Shea was older by two months. Sam Wyrouck’s parents both died when Sam was seven so at age eleven his older sister and her husband got him out of the orphanage to live with them. Ernie Scharf worked for Hub’s and Fuzzy’s Main
Street Texaco Automotive Enterprise. This was a new business in the middle of the great depression, and in order for any business to succeed, it must have an aggressive plan. Ernie
procured a flat “ditto” pad to make flyers to distribute to potential customers. That gave the two boys Sam and George an idea. They borrowed the ditto pad, ditto pencils and paper and without a shortage of ideas, they went to work. George was a great artist and Sam was the editor. The two boys came up with more than an Idea. It was more a whole business plan.
The boys started a newspaper named the “WeeBuzz”. The paper’s motto was “We buzz, you read”. The paper consisted of two or sometimes three sheet of eight and one half by eleven inch paper printed on both sides. After the master page was hand printed with the special “ditto pencils, each sheet was put down flat on the pad, smoothed out and pulled up. One
master sheet was good for about 100 copies. The Wee Buzz” consisted of neighborhood, city and school news, editorials, interviews of many people including Mayor Hawsworth, the chief of police and Walt Disney by letter. An important part of the paper was George’s weekly cartoon. One cartoon that George drew was, of two boys running very, very, very fast with each carrying a watermelon. One boy said to the other-“Why are those bees following us so closely?”
The other boy said ‘Them’s not bees, them’s buckshot'”.
We tried selling the paper for one cent but few were sold. The second edition had ads in it. We then sold ads to the neighborhood drug store, the grocery stores, the barber shops gas stations, car dealers and even the corner saloon. The big spenders who took out full page ads for 75 cents were the politicians at election times.
Butte at that time took their parades seriously and they always made good copy for the Wee Buzz. Once when the two boys were at a loss for printing worthy news, they talked a neighbor boy into biting a dog. That edition headline read’ “Boy bites dog.”
The Wee Buzz was produced almost weekly for two years. George and Sam never made a great deal of money but there was always enough to take George’s younger brother, Billy and Sam’s
Younger nephew Gene to the Saturday afternoon nickel matinee at the Park theatre and have a treat of Necco candies. Even though dozens and dozens of issues were printed, I am Sam and do not own a single copy of the Wee Buzz.
Sam can be contacted at 801-707-2666.