any other former paper boys here ?

[MORTARDUDE]

I was just thinking back over my 40 years of work...I started helping out on the afternoon paper route when I was 13 or so, in 1961. I think the papers were 5c a piece. As I recall, we always got a lot of extras to sell and got to keep the nickel for each one. In those days baseball cards were in nickel and penny packs and you got one card for a penny and maybe 10 or more for a nickel.
Comics were 10c each until the mid '60s when they were 12c. I got suckered into helping another neighbor with the morning route several times in the summer. You had to get up real early and it was hell collecting because you had to do it every week. There were some folks who paid by the month too. It seemed people were always moving or were never at home. We devised all kinds of methods to mark mailboxes so we knew who got what paper,
figured out ways to catch people at home who were several months behind in paying for the paper, and working on our techniques to fold the papers so you could throw them better. I wasn't very good at that. The two kids who lived next door had mean parents. They didn't beat them or anything, but the older boy had to put the profits from his paper route in a mayonnaise jar and hide it in a culvert or his mother would take it away from him.
It still doesn't make sense to me. When there was a big story....like riots,
assasinations, space shots, wars etc., they would prints lots of extra papers, and sometimes special edition runs and the afternoon paper would have huge headlines, and very little real news. I still have a bunch of those...When I was in the 12th grade in 1965 - 1966, I was on schoolteam that had to memorize all the articles in the papers all week and then on Saturday go on TV and answer questions against another school..sort of like College Bowl used to be..Ours was called Quiz 'Em On the Air, and it was a lot of fun. It was hard work though. We won the first match and lost the second one. I took the girl that sat next to me
on TV to the Senior Prom. It was the last date I had for a long time. I was on the shy side..What were your experiences with your paper route ?

Larry

[SuperScout]

In one of the cruelest jobs ever devised for highschoolers, the early morning paper route had to rank up there close to the top. For some reason known only to God, my older brother accepted this glorious business opportunity from a friend of his, to take over an established route, and start rolling in cash. Um-hum. On the first morning of our venture into capitalism, my brother had set the alarm clock to the wrong time, and as we drove to the paper pick-up point, I notied that the movies were still showing at our local drive-in theater, meaning that it was just about 1:00 a.m., not the 4:00 a.m. time need to start our route. Not to be undaunted by this meer trifle of time, we slept on the grass of a nearby building until the traffic awoke us.

Riding in the back seat our of 1936 Dodge fourdoor gangster wagon, reading the house numbers off the printed page, rolling up newspapers, handing them up to my brother equipped with a flashlight searching for housenumbers, we were obstacles to navigation, and the slowest delivery boys in the Western Hemisphere. I'd later fall asleep in 2nd period class, and had to confess to my brother that my willingness to participate in his venture had long expired.

After 2 weeks of this entreprenerial debacle, we started and successfully ran an "egg route," delivering fresh farm eggs, and later fresh broiler chickens, in an afternoon business deal. No more early mornings, until I joined the Army!

[BLUEHAWK]

Mr first and only paper route was at age 9, the minimum age for carriers in those days... I carried the Evanston Review, one day a week, Thursday mornings starting at 6AM before school, and did their collections too, using one of those old timey deals with a BIG ring and little cards with holes in them. My collections came to about $60 monthly, all in cash which people would leave on their porch or in a mailbox or a secret hiding place. The Review as a nice paper, looked a lot like the Chicago Sun-Times format then. My folks were finishing graduate work in Evanston, he at Garrett Biblical Institute and she at Northwestern. We lived at 1324 Greenleaf Street, above a Maytag dealership repair shop, never will forget that place.

At age 9, however, my concept of capitalism was not fully formed. Eventually I came to believe that the collections were how I was to get paid for my services (rather than having to wait for a monthly check). So, I dipped into the jar one day, and took my buddies to the corner store for a soda pop and a Twinkie each. Dad was not pleased.

[reconeil]

Not much I can add about my 10-11 year old paper boy days, other than not particularly liking to at the crack-of dawn jumping on my bike and going out to freeze my-little-butt-off or get soaking wet,...just to get The Word out.

Though, and in fairness to me, at least I was always on target (being A Pitcher, and a good one at that), was dependable besides having excellent control, and was actually doing something worthwhile.

Regardless, and whether my current Paper Boy (actually man or woman) ever played ball or not and is actually doing something worthwhile these days(?),...I do wish they could manage to get the paper on my quite large and covered porch all the time. Getting tired of breaking-out the ladder every now and then to retrieve paper off of roof,...just so I can keep-up on mostly sanitized, politically-corrected and/or specifically censored-out material. In fairness, advertisements, obituaries and "The Funnies"seem to have escaped the greatly editing and/or normally mellowing, soothing, pacifying, and politically-correcting censorship process (the norm).

Besides, the paper on the roof usually gets wet,...whether packaged or not. So then,..."IT" isn't even good enough for its primary purpose, which is to wipe ones butt with during these hard times.

Neil

P.S. Mike...
Do you think I would be well suited for one of those Newspaper telephone soliciting jobs,...where people are trying to sell this rag or that rag? Hey,...why not? Wasn't I once a Paper Boy? That should count for something?

[cadetat6]

I was 12 years old in 1934 and got a Detroit News Paper route.I would pick them up at Mr. Needams garage. He also sold penny candy bars, and that was my down-fall,because I lived on candy. I would fold my paper's and ride my bike and throw the paper's on customer's porch. I remember Saturday paper did not have many page's so we folded them into a square and they sailed pretty good. In bad weather on Sunday morning my father would drive me on my route

Art

[Boats]

OK I was a paper too.

I deliever the Chicago American (now on longer) I had about 220 homes it was daily and I hated it. I also had to collect back then and you should hear the stories about those who couldn't pay. I never got a tip so I finally tossed it in about 14 months later.

Today its better the kids don't have to collect and bills are paid through the mail. We get the Hammond Times for the last 25 years or so. It's a daily and my wife has a fit if its not there each and every day. Reads that thing from to back.

[revwardoc]

I didn't have a paper route myself but when I was about 6, I would occaisionally give my cousin (6 years older than I) a hand with his route. I would sit on the back of his bike and toss the papers to the appropriate houses. There was this dog, a black lab, on the route that would try to chase us but he was tied to a fence. This hound-from-hell didn't like anybody or anything and was considered to be the scourge of the neighborhood. One day, we're delivering the papers when The Hound of the Baskervilles came running around the corner of his house, trailing the snapped rope. My cousin tried to pedal as fast as he could but it was no use. The dog got hold of my pants leg. Naturally I tried to pull my leg away from his jaws and finally did so only to have my foot go into the spokes of the rear wheel. We went ass-over-teakettle, landing in a heap of newspapers, blood and torn clothes. Then that f*ckin' canine bit the both of us! The dog ran off and we limped to my cousin's house. He threw down his now unridable bike, grabbed his brother's and rode over to our grandfather's barn. I saw him come out of the barn with something in his hand and he rode off in the direction we had come from. A minute later I heard 2 gunshots and he rode back faster than Lance Armstrong on the downhill run back to the barn where he returned the .38 he "borrowed". Needless to say the dog NEVER bothered anyone again and no one complained...except my uncle and grandfather who tanned my cousin's butt!

[BLUEHAWK]

Hey cadet!

I remember those old square folded papers too! I'd forgotten all about those things, what a nice memory you brought up.

[Boats]

Doc,

You gave me a flash back. I recall me and my wagon with my papers out one day when this "huge" siberian huskey pully out his stake and ran at me across the street.

I froze just stood there - did't flinch and the this dog just stopped and waited for me to move. What seems like an eternity (5 minutes) this little skinny lady that owns this dog runs out of the house takes a paper out of my wagon and beat this SOB all the way home (whimpering as he went). She aske me if I was OK - sure lady but I wasn't going to move. She said he's really a nice dog. Yea Right

[SEATJERKER]

...hand delivered when I was 11, 12, or so 7 days a week,...

...also did a motor route as a second job after night crew at the local market, route grew from 80 to 180 in a year, and I would round up any unsuspecting idiot who wanted to "help" on as many mornings as poss,...

...sundays were the worst as the "Times Union" up here had more flers then news print, and yea I got bit by a freight train of a shepard one day while collecting, all I wanted was my hospital bills to be payed, but the insurance adjuster wanted to see this vicious dog before paying the claim,...

...so my family's attorney said fine, drove him out to the house which had a whole bunch of "BEWARE OF DOG" signs, and there is the dog laying sleeping in the garage, and as I'm told, the adjuster said something to the effect of "that dog doesn't look that mean", so he starts rapping on the windows of the garage, and rin tin tin goes apeshit, and attempts, and almost succeeded to come through the upper windows tooth, and nail, and proceeded to cut himself in the process, the adjuster ran to the car, and said "where do I sign, only my lawyer uped the antie at that moment, I got 3000.00 minus 1/3, and the homeowner sued their insurance company for agravating the dog, and causing injury to it in the process,...

...still have 9 holes in my ass cheek where the 2 incisors, and middle toofs sunk in that day, any one want an 8X10, looks like a "C" sidways... '.......'

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