Paper Boy

Not me, I didn't use a bicycle, but the weather is about right.

A comment from yesterday's post from Skip, with a follow-on comment from Borepatch regarding delivering newspapers sent me down the memory trail. Though it was a long, long time ago, there are things I still remember about delivering the newspaper like it was yesterday.

First of all, I distinctly remember getting up at 0600, Monday through Saturday (there was no Sunday paper), every week. The paper had to be delivered come rain or shine, come heat or cold, I took it as a responsibility to get that paper to my customers on time and with a minimal amount of fuss. (With one exception, explanation to follow.)

Most of the time I accomplished exactly that.

So six days out of seven I awoke to the "click" of my clock radio followed immediately by the National Anthem. The time I had to get up coincided with the time that the local radio station (WCFR) came on the air. As radio stations seem to broadcast all the time these days, that playing of the National Anthem at sign on (and again at sign off) is probably a lost thing. Too bad that.

So I started my day with the Star-Spangled Banner (to this day if I hear a "click" and then the opening bars of the anthem, I get a bit of a nervous twitch, a sort of Pavlovian response), I'd throw my clothes on, grab my paper bag and head out to the driveway to get the papers and stuff them in my paper bag. (There was a guy who's job it was to deliver the correct number of papers to every route, by car. If he was off, he had to come back out with the missing papers. I don't recall myself being short but once or twice the whole time I had the route.)

Then it was to the streets. As I recall I had about 40 houses to deliver to, not too bad, the route covered maybe a mile, mile and a half, only part of which was uphill, the part at the end when I had to walk home when finished. Never a problem except the one morning where it was about 20 below zero, as I walked back up the hill, I couldn't really feel my legs or my cheeks anymore. There was a temptation to sit down and rest for a bit.

Yellow marks my paper route, back in the day.
Google Maps

Yes, I picked up the pace and got home before frostbite settled in, it was close.

I delivered the paper in the rain as well. There was a flap on the paper bag (which I recall as being made from some sort of canvas, it was water proof at any rate) which kept the newspapers dry but didn't do me much good. I had to walk the route and place each paper in a specially dedicated place at each house. Somewhere out of the wet. No riding down the street and flinging the paper onto the porch or lawn (or roof), no sir, we were civilized.

Friday was collection day. A lot of folks would leave an envelope with their payment (always cash), others would expect me to come round Friday afternoon and knock on the door to get the money. I tried hard to convince those recalcitrants that leaving the money in an envelope saved me a lot of time. Of course, there were seven or eight diehards who were convinced that thieves would walk off with their dollar a week. (That never happened by the way.)

Some folks would leave a tip, some didn't, I treated them all equally, after all, the paper was paying me to do the job (I think it was about 10 cents per customer per week). It wasn't much but four bucks was huge money for a small town Vermont kid. Enough to keep me in comic books and Cokes in the manner to which I became accustomed. The tips were squirreled away for a rainy day. (Or the occasional candy bar at the store!)

Saturday I would head down to the corner store, flush with cash from my collection the day before and the few who always seemed to wait until Saturday. There I would peruse the latest offerings from DC and Marvel comics (I was partial to Sgt Rock and Sgt Fury), purchase a couple, grab a Coke and saunter back to the ancestral dwelling to spend Saturday as a "man of leisure" with nothing better to do then read my comics and drink my Coke.

I remember the year I gave it up. The paper (it was the Rutland Herald) never had a paper on Christmas. One year they decided to go ahead and publish on Christmas Day. I was aghast, it was barbaric, it was horrid, it meant delaying Christmas morning until I had delivered the paper. I knew damn well that my kid brothers would be unrestrained and my parents would no doubt indulge their desire to open presents before I returned.

So I let all of my customers know that there would be a paper published Christmas morning, but they wouldn't see it until the afternoon. Only one guy bitched about that, and he was a guy that was about three weeks in arrears on his payments. Oh well, call and complain I says, wail to the Heavens I says, see who gives a...

He did complain and the paper said "We'll look into it." They called me, I said it was the afternoon or they could get someone else to deliver it. Also, said complainant was behind in his payments. The guy at the paper told me, "don't worry about it, I told the guy I'd look into it, I didn't tell him that I'd do anything about it." After that though, I figured it was time to hang up the bag and do something else for a living. Cutting grass and shoveling snow was my new gig.

Man there were days I missed that paper route! The new gig was hard work!!

At any rate. I think I had that route for five or six years, started in junior high right up until high school. It was simple, it got me out in the fresh air, I got to meet people, and it put spending money in my pocket. Life was simpler then. It was a good experience. Too bad the printed newspaper business is dying out, every kid should have a paper route at some point in his/her life.

The paper I delivered and the town I delivered it in.
(And no, I never met any of the Simpsons.)
(Source)

By the way, Happy Friday the 13th.

Full moon was last night, but it's too damned cold for werewolves or vampires, so I guess I'll be okay...