The Rules of the Back Page

The fee is four dollars. Exact change. The window in the Mailroom corridor is open from nine to four, and I do not break bills, which is printed on a card taped to the glass in my own hand.

One. A price or no ad. A listing without a number is a wish, and wishes go in the letters column, which is not mine. I have turned away good copy over this. A man came to the window in August with three clean lines about a hand-built trailer, cedar sides, working lights, and where the price belonged he had written make offer. I read him the rule. He came back the next morning with two hundred and fifty dollars written in, it ran Thursday, and it sold in nine days.

Two. It has to fit. The back page gives me six columns at eleven picas and I set them full. If your ad runs long I trim from the end, because the end is where people put the sentiment. Nobody has ever asked me for the sentiment back.

Three. The grammar is mine. I correct the spelling, I set the abbreviations house style, and I do not consult you about it. If you wrote excelent I will set excellent and neither of us will mention it again.

Four. I do not ask where a listing came from. The question has never once improved an ad.

The oldest ad in the book

It first ran in the spring of 1951 and the copy has not changed a word since:

KEY, working. Fits one door. Door not named at seller's request. Twelve dollars, cash. No trades.

The renewal comes every November in a plain envelope, four singles and the card initialed, no letter. I set it, I file the receipt, I go on to the next one.

The key has sold twice. It has also come back twice, which is its own line in the book. The first return arrived with a note saying the door was not where the buyer had been led to expect. The second arrived with a note saying it was. Refunds are between the parties. I do not handle money that is not the fee. I log the return, I strike the sold line, and the ad runs again the following week at the standing rate.

Precedence of receipt

Two advertisers came to me inside eight days with the same vehicle. A 1962 dump truck, runs, needs glass, and both gave the same telephone exchange. Neither would withdraw and each had opinions about the other that I am not going to set in type.

The policy covers it. Every fee is stamped with the day and the hour when it crosses the sill. The first receipt is timed Tuesday at 10:15. The second is timed the following Wednesday. Precedence of receipt means the earlier filing keeps the copy as written, and the later filing alters his own or pulls it and takes the fee back at the window.

He altered it. His ad ran as SECOND 1962 dump truck, runs, needs glass, and it sold before the first one did. I do not draw conclusions from that. I note it because a man came in last week wanting to know whether the policy was fair, and the policy's job is to be the same on Wednesday as it was on Tuesday.

Friday

After close on Friday I take the ledger, the receipts, and the drawer, and I count all three in pencil. Fees in, fees returned, column inches sold, lines killed.

It has balanced every Friday I have kept it. One evening last spring it ran four dollars heavy for about eleven minutes, and then I found the fee I had entered against the wrong week, moved it, and it came out level. That is not the same as the book being wrong. The book was right the whole time and I was behind it.

Window opens at nine. Bring the change.