Confessions of a Teenage Paperboy
What was your first real job? I was a teenage paperboy.
TIME Magazine published a piece in mid-February about the decline in the number of kids who deliver the daily newspaper. According to the article, only about 13 percent of today’s newspaper delivery people are “kids,” down from nearly 70 percent in 1990. While there are a number of reasons for the decline, the article points primarily to two: the changing manner in which newspapers are distributed and the flight of families from the “suburbs to the exurbs,” which are too vast in size for kids to cover by foot or on a bike.
Reading that piece took me instantly back to the three years I delivered papers for the Times Leader, at that time a six-day-a-week paper based in the northeastern Pennsylvania city of Wilkes-Barre. I got the job early in eighth grade and I can remember the sights, sounds, smells, blood, sweat and tears like it was yesterday.
Northeastern Pennsylvania is hilly in general and we lived in the Back Mountain area outside of Wilkes-Barre. My alarm would go off at the insane hour of 4:45 a.m. and I was usually out the door in a mental fog by 5. I would hop on my trusty blue Sears bike with the Y-shaped handlebars that my Dad had bought me some years earlier, not knowing at the time that it would someday cradle a bag of newspapers just perfectly.
I delivered about 30 papers each morning and the drop-off point for my stack was three blocks from my house on a corner near an elementary school. Two more downhill blocks from there was the start of my route.
My bike and I delivered those papers through all kinds of conditions—wind, rain, cold, snow— rarely asking one of my parents for a ride unless the temperature dipped into the low single digits or if a blowing snowstorm was simply too much for me to handle. What was most enjoyable about the route was the quiet, the fresh morning air and the feeling that those of us awake and moving at that hour didn’t have to share the world with too many others.
I had that route down cold. I knew who wanted their paper placed under the porch mat and who wanted it slipped inside the storm door. Who wanted it folded and who liked it flat. I used mouse-like reflexes to keep old, beaten-down porches from creaking as I gingerly placed the paper inside someone’s attached mailbox.
I became intimately aware of people’s routines and knew who got up when, who came home late, and what they might have had for dinner the previous night. I could tell you who drank Folgers and who drank Maxwell House. Whose house was sealed up tight and who should have invested in a better set of curtains. I knew if I was on time simply by the way a customer’s house was lit up. “Oh, the upstairs light in the Johnson house isn’t on yet? Sweet! I’m running ahead of schedule.”
Every two weeks, I’d go on “collection” where I’d roam the neighborhood and get my $4 from each customer for two weeks worth of newspapers, plus a tip. Only rarely did I stalk anyone looking for “my two dollars,” but when the movie Better Off Dead came out in 1985, you could bet that I and my fellow paperboys and girls were there in spirit with the tenacious carrier chasing John Cusack around town.
The end of my route was a dead-end street in a wooded area a good two miles from my house. One morning after turning around following the delivery of my last paper, I was cornered, literally, by a snarling German Shepherd-sized mutt with a Cujo-like attitude that said “it’s either you or me.” He was blocking my way out of the neighborhood and just wouldn’t let me pass. His disheveled look, menacing bark and healthy set of snapping teeth trumped my desire to get home.
After hemming and hawing for about 10 minutes, hoping he might retreat, I finally summoned the courage to bang on someone’s door and ask for help, not an easy thing to do when the sun’s not up yet. The man who answered knew the dog was trouble so he called the police while I waited patiently on his porch. Fortunately, an officer arrived quickly and was able to use his car to block the dog from getting me. I’ll always remember the reassuring look he gave me after the dog had retreated to the woods. “If that dog bothers you again,” he muttered,” I’ll shoot it myself.” I have no doubt that he meant that.
Times have changed and it’s mostly adults now who deliver today’s newspapers by car, sliding them into our mailboxes or depositing them with a thud on our driveways early in the morning. That’s all well and good, I suppose, and I certainly appreciate a dry paper on a rainy or snowy morning. However, there’s nothing like a paper route to teach a kid responsibility, discipline, money management and the ability, or inability I guess, to outsmart a snarling dog at 6 in the morning.
TIME Magazine published a piece in mid-February about the decline in the number of kids who deliver the daily newspaper. According to the article, only about 13 percent of today’s newspaper delivery people are “kids,” down from nearly 70 percent in 1990. While there are a number of reasons for the decline, the article points primarily to two: the changing manner in which newspapers are distributed and the flight of families from the “suburbs to the exurbs,” which are too vast in size for kids to cover by foot or on a bike.
Reading that piece took me instantly back to the three years I delivered papers for the Times Leader, at that time a six-day-a-week paper based in the northeastern Pennsylvania city of Wilkes-Barre. I got the job early in eighth grade and I can remember the sights, sounds, smells, blood, sweat and tears like it was yesterday.
Northeastern Pennsylvania is hilly in general and we lived in the Back Mountain area outside of Wilkes-Barre. My alarm would go off at the insane hour of 4:45 a.m. and I was usually out the door in a mental fog by 5. I would hop on my trusty blue Sears bike with the Y-shaped handlebars that my Dad had bought me some years earlier, not knowing at the time that it would someday cradle a bag of newspapers just perfectly.
I delivered about 30 papers each morning and the drop-off point for my stack was three blocks from my house on a corner near an elementary school. Two more downhill blocks from there was the start of my route.
My bike and I delivered those papers through all kinds of conditions—wind, rain, cold, snow— rarely asking one of my parents for a ride unless the temperature dipped into the low single digits or if a blowing snowstorm was simply too much for me to handle. What was most enjoyable about the route was the quiet, the fresh morning air and the feeling that those of us awake and moving at that hour didn’t have to share the world with too many others.
I had that route down cold. I knew who wanted their paper placed under the porch mat and who wanted it slipped inside the storm door. Who wanted it folded and who liked it flat. I used mouse-like reflexes to keep old, beaten-down porches from creaking as I gingerly placed the paper inside someone’s attached mailbox.
I became intimately aware of people’s routines and knew who got up when, who came home late, and what they might have had for dinner the previous night. I could tell you who drank Folgers and who drank Maxwell House. Whose house was sealed up tight and who should have invested in a better set of curtains. I knew if I was on time simply by the way a customer’s house was lit up. “Oh, the upstairs light in the Johnson house isn’t on yet? Sweet! I’m running ahead of schedule.”
Every two weeks, I’d go on “collection” where I’d roam the neighborhood and get my $4 from each customer for two weeks worth of newspapers, plus a tip. Only rarely did I stalk anyone looking for “my two dollars,” but when the movie Better Off Dead came out in 1985, you could bet that I and my fellow paperboys and girls were there in spirit with the tenacious carrier chasing John Cusack around town.
The end of my route was a dead-end street in a wooded area a good two miles from my house. One morning after turning around following the delivery of my last paper, I was cornered, literally, by a snarling German Shepherd-sized mutt with a Cujo-like attitude that said “it’s either you or me.” He was blocking my way out of the neighborhood and just wouldn’t let me pass. His disheveled look, menacing bark and healthy set of snapping teeth trumped my desire to get home.
After hemming and hawing for about 10 minutes, hoping he might retreat, I finally summoned the courage to bang on someone’s door and ask for help, not an easy thing to do when the sun’s not up yet. The man who answered knew the dog was trouble so he called the police while I waited patiently on his porch. Fortunately, an officer arrived quickly and was able to use his car to block the dog from getting me. I’ll always remember the reassuring look he gave me after the dog had retreated to the woods. “If that dog bothers you again,” he muttered,” I’ll shoot it myself.” I have no doubt that he meant that.
Times have changed and it’s mostly adults now who deliver today’s newspapers by car, sliding them into our mailboxes or depositing them with a thud on our driveways early in the morning. That’s all well and good, I suppose, and I certainly appreciate a dry paper on a rainy or snowy morning. However, there’s nothing like a paper route to teach a kid responsibility, discipline, money management and the ability, or inability I guess, to outsmart a snarling dog at 6 in the morning.
posted by W.S. Wuori at 4:59 PM
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