When Joseph C. Kline Sr. visited his old neighborhood in West Akron, it took a little time to get his bearings on the side streets.
“Most of these houses weren’t here,” he said. “This was all field.”
Riding up and down the streets of Castle Park, he was pleased to see his childhood home — a brick bungalow built by his father in 1927 — standing at 228 Kenilworth Drive.
“That’s the house!” he beamed.
Kline, a Copley resident who will turn 92 on March 13, also perked up when he saw a small brick tower marking the entrance to Castle Boulevard.
“That’s it!” he said. “That’s where I picked up my papers. Right down here in the middle.”
Kline probably knew the neighborhood better than anyone when he was a youth. As a paperboy for the Akron Times-Press in the 1930s, he made daily visits to every other home.
A truck delivered three wire-bound bundles each day to Kline’s pickup spot on Castle. As he recalls, each bundle held about 50 newspapers.
“I know at one time I had 150 customers,” he said.
The Times-Press, a competitor of the Beacon Journal, charged subscribers 20 cents a week for seven-day delivery or 10 cents for Sundays only. The newsstand price was 3 cents daily and 10 cents Sunday, so home subscribers saved 8 cents a week, a bargain during the Great Depression.
One of five siblings, Kline was the son of Frank and Mary Kline. When he began his paper route, he was a student at St. Vincent High School and had to wake up before dawn to begin his deliveries at 6 a.m.
He folded each newspaper three ways and tucked in the ends for easy delivery.
“I had a bicycle with a big basket,” he said. “It wasn’t a small one. I’d line it and put them in there. You could get about 60 or 70 in there.”
The route went as far west as North Hawkins Avenue, the city’s edge, and as far east as Twin Oaks Road. He pedaled from street to street, depositing newspapers on front porches.
“I wouldn’t throw them on the ground,” he said. “I would open the door and put them back in, you know.”
The route included ritzy residences of bankers, lawyers, doctors and other professionals. The place at 1255 W. Market St. stood out from the rest.
Harbel Manor, the 118-room home of rubber baron Harvey S. Firestone, his wife, Idabelle, and their six children, was the showpiece of a vast estate at West Market and Twin Oaks. “Harbel” was a combination of the owners’ first names.
The founder of Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. bought 60 acres of farmland in 1907 and hired Akron architectural firm Harpster & Bliss to design the three-story mansion, which was built in 1912. The manor expanded over the years, adding a gatehouse, servants’ homes and indoor swimming pool.
Through land deals, the estate grew to 100 acres, including a barn, stables, polo grounds, orchards and gardens. The Firestones kept 75 horses, 125 cattle, 5,000 chickens and 40 sheep. They sold 39 acres to Portage Country Club.
A real treat
Kline remembers riding his bicycle up to the mansion and going around back to a kitchen entrance and down a long hall.
“I’d go over there to put the papers up there,” he said. “Then if the cook was cooking, she’d say, ‘Well, Joe, wait a minute.’ The first thing I know, I’ve got a couple of pieces of cake and stuff like that for me.”
He delivered 10 newspapers daily to the Firestones. If they needed more, a butler told him.
As Kline recalls, Firestone was a rather short fellow, always nicely dressed, who had a serious demeanor.
“He didn’t talk too much,” Kline said. “He may have asked me for my name a couple times, but that’s about all. They were awful quiet.”
Famous guests at Harbel Manor included industrialist Henry Ford, inventor Thomas Edison, naturalist John Burroughs and former President William Howard Taft.
“I saw Ford,” Kline said. “Well, I just said hello to him and talked to him a little bit. And he used to walk away, you see?”
It’s possible that Kline met Edison, but he’s not certain.
“There were people who said hello to me sometimes, but they didn’t tell me who they were,” he said.
Getting into mischief
Kline had other connections to the estate in addition to delivering papers. When he was a kid, he almost lost his life in a lagoon far behind the mansion.
Neighborhood kids sneaked onto the property to go wading. Kline didn’t know how to swim, so he floated on a piece of wood, but a couple of hooligans wanted his raft.
“There were real deep places in there,” he said. “I finally found a board I wanted, then started off, and they tried to take it away from me. And so I almost drowned in there.”
Kline remembers the Firestone livestock, too.
“We used to ride the cows back behind Kenilworth Drive,” he said with a laugh. “We would just jump on them.”
One time, an angry bull broke out of its pen and Kline ran for the hills. “Blood was running out of his nose,” he said. “He was so doggone mad. I got out of there.”
He and other kids volunteered at the Firestone stables and polo grounds, walking and feeding horses. Sometimes they received tips from riders.
“I used to bring their horses back and forth, and put them in the stable,” Kline said.
When the time came to collect money from subscribers, Kline was instructed to knock on back doors of homes. He carried a metal ring with cards that he punched when paid. Servants often greeted him.
“Most of the people would pay me — maybe for the week,” he said. “But later on, we got some cheap heads.”
One customer owed Kline for four months of newspapers, but he refused to pony up.
“But I got him on that, though,” Kline said with a laugh. “I got it all back. I went to the Times-Press and they sent people out to him.”
The Firestones were far more generous to the paperboy. At Christmas, the butler used to give Kline a white envelope containing $20, a princely sum during the Depression.
Kline nearly wore out his bicycle in the year or two that he delivered the newspaper. He had turned over the route to another boy when Firestone died on Feb. 7, 1938, at age 69.
Six months later, the Beacon Journal bought the Times-Press, closed it and moved into its East Exchange Street offices.
Later years
Kline graduated from St. Vincent in 1939 and attended Kent State before joining the military. He served 4› years with the 1375th Army Air Force squadron as a gunner, radioman and mechanic during World War II, achieving the rank of corporal.
In 1942, he married St. Vincent graduate Catherine E. Possellt, and the couple raised three children — Joseph Jr., Garry and John Kline. Joseph Sr. worked at Seiberling Rubber and Catherine was a beautician. They were married for 67 years and welcomed four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren before her death in 2009 at age 88.
“I miss my wife,” Kline said.
The Firestone family sold Harbel Manor to developers in 1959 — nearly five years after Idabelle Firestone’s death. Twin Oaks Estates Development Co., led by Paul and Edgar Prinz, bought the remaining 65-acre estate and subdivided it into 45 residential lots. Wreckers tore down the mansion.
“I thought they were crazy,” Kline said. “They were putting houses in there and taking out all the big buildings. That was ridiculous!”
Georgetown Condominiums rose where the old mansion stood. The old brick wall in front of the condos marked the perimeter of Harbel Manor.
“That’s where it was,” Kline said wistfully on his recent tour of the neighborhood.
He pointed to St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, which was dedicated in 1952 after the Firestone family donated eight acres.
“That’s where they had the horses,” he said. “That went down all the way to the railroad tracks.”
For the briefest of moments, the 91-year-old was a kid again, pedaling a bicycle, delivering newspapers and having cake in the Firestone kitchen.
“That’s been a long time ago,” Kline said.
Beacon Journal copy editor Mark J. Price is the author of The Rest Is History: True Tales From Akron’s Vibrant Past, a book to be published in March by the University of Akron Press. He can be reached at 330-996-3850 or send email to mjprice@thebeaconjournal.com.
