The dangers of the paper route

[boundforboston]

https://www.cjr.org/special_report/newspaper-carrier-shot.php

 

[Moderator1]

Crazy when you think about those long-ago days. I was a "paper boy" at 12 - would wander the neighborhood at 4:30 in the morning tossing papers into porches. Once a month, I'd wander the same streets at night with a cigar box full of money after doing my collections. Never got hassled one time.

Can you imagine allowing your kid to do that today?

 

[CD Boogie]

I had a morning paper route for several years. Used to love checking the box scores each morning before I loaded the stack of papers onto the spring rack on the back of my 10-speed. I got bitten by at least two dogs, chased by countless others, as this was back before lease laws when dogs were allowed to roam. One morning, a guy who lived next door to one of my customers was shot dead in his driveway and I came upon the scene just a minute after the first cop arrived. I was 11, and I don't remember being frightened about it or my parents saying anything about not wanting me out alone.

I loved being up early in the morning, when the dew was on the grass and few people were afoot. I still love that time of day and I'm sure it has a lot to do with my fond memories of being a paper boy. I learned a lot about responsibility, collecting money, and how to kick a dog in the teeth while pedaling furiously.

 

[BurnsWhenIPee]

Always wanted to be a paper boy growing up in Iowa. Then Johnny Gosch happened when I was about 8 years old.

That's where that dream ended.

 

[Doc Holliday]

I tried four or five times to get a paper route when I was 12-14 years old. I never could land one. I had friends that ran routes and made decent change for a kid. I knew if I got a paper route, I would amass the greatest baseball card collection of any 12 year-old in history.

 

[The Big Ragu]

When I was in college (when newspapers still had wide circulation), for two summers, my friend Bill and I got the best job ever. We were "summer district managers" for a newspaper that delivered to a very large area. It was one of the largest circulation newspapers in the country.

It was supposed to be like a management internship for college kids, but the office we worked out of used us simply to get their papers delivered. They gave us a van, paid us something like $10 an hour for 8 hours a day (which was a lot at the time), and then sent us out with the van and thousands of newspapers to cover all the paper routes they couldn't fill during the summer when kids went on vacation. In addition to the hourly wage, they also paid us by the newspaper (and I think we were delivering more than a thousand newspapers a day), and we got to keep whatever tips we could collect. We'd just leave envelopes every two weeks with instructions to leave the money in their mailbox or under their mat. Most people actually complied, amazingly, so once every two weeks, we'd take longer and collect our money. Even if we didn't collect from every single house, we were still rolling in cash because we were delivering a boat load of newspapers. Still, at the end of the summer, Bill decided we were going to collect from everyone who hadn't paid us in a few months, because there was no way he was going to leave any money on the table, and he started ringing doorbells at 5 a.m. I am surprised we didn't get killed.

We'd show up before 4 a.m., grab the newspapers, and one of us would starting driving toward our first neighborhood while the other was in the back of the van stuffing newspapers into bags. The routes were all over the place, but we had it down to a science. It would take us a few hours and then we were done for the day. We didn't have show up for the actual "management" internship. We'd just head to the beach.

On some of the routes, we'd drive down the street tossing the newspapers from the window of the van. We got a lot of complaints -- the paper wasn't on their stoop, etc. We'd get little slips with the complaints and we were supposed to correct it, but we didn't care. One person complained a bunch of times and Bill just cancelled the newspaper on them. I feel guilty thinking back (even if I am laughing). It may have been the best job I have ever had.

 

[Bronco77]

Funny story in "When Pride Still Mattered" about the kid who delivered the Milwaukee Journal to Vince Lombardi's home in the '60s. He'd collect once a month, and Mrs. Lombardi always answered the door and graciously gave him a tip. But one day, Vince answered, the poor kid just stood there tongue-tied, and Lombardi barked at him to state his business and be on his way.

 

[Cosmo]

Had a paper route for the Washington Post when I was 16. Loaded up at 1 a.m. at a gas station, was usually done by 4:30 or so. Good money for the time. Sunday papers were the worst because you had to deliver the inserts on Saturday afternoon and then come back to do the main route in the wee hours.

 

[ChrisLong]

The paper in my hometown (where I started my career) folded 20 years ago. The anniversary of that just passed in March. On the FB group page for the city, from time to time there is a post about "who misses the paper?" There are always hundreds of responses, many of them from people who delivered it as a kid. I posted that it seems like there were more people delivering the paper than actually reading the paper.

 

[MTM]

My first wife had a route for awhile when she was taking college classes. She would get up at midnight and collect and deliver her papers and be back by 3. The killer was having to do it seven days. Late Saturday and Sunday was a pain.

Then when "can you occasionally help me on Saturday night?" became "why aren't you helping me?" I was done.

The hours were good for a student, but it just wasn't enough money to make it worth her and our while.

That said, when our paper was a p.m., delivery was a great job. Pick up papers at 1 and be done by 3 for most carriers.

 

[BTExpress]

She would get up at midnight and collect.

Hmmmmmm.

 

[Donny in his element]

I rode along in my grandpa's 5-speed Datsun in the early 90s when he'd deliver Florida Today. Seemed the worst part was the bagging of the papers.

I remember that's also the first time I heard the term "tennis elbow." He had it at some point flinging the papers through the passenger-side window with the right-handed Frisbee toss. So he would fling 'em with his left over the roof, lefty hook shot style. I was impressed.

Was also a prolific letter to the editor writer.

 

[Fredrick]

Does anybody else feel like the boomers would still be buying newspapers and getting them delivered if the product wasn't actually 70 percent worse than what the consumer used to get in a daily? There still are enough boomers alive to support the industry had the product not become totally worthless.

 

[Slacker]

I rode along in my grandpa's 5-speed Datsun in the early 90s when he'd deliver Florida Today. Seemed the worst part was the bagging of the papers.

I remember that's also the first time I heard the term "tennis elbow." He had it at some point flinging the papers through the passenger-side window with the right-handed Frisbee toss. So he would fling 'em with his left over the roof, lefty hook shot style. I was impressed.

Was also a prolific letter to the editor writer.

The hook shot was a better idea anyway.

 

[T+C]

One winter in northern Manitoba I had a job helping the newspaper distribution manager hand out the Winnipeg daily paper to the delivery boys. The papers would arrive a day late by train and if it was on time, it would get to the station about 6 a.m. The paper boys would deliver before they went to school. Just remember that some mornings it would be 40 below zero so it wasn't a fun job.

 

[Southwinds]

This thread brought back this memory that I hadn't thought about in forever.

When I was growing up, we had a PM paper that was eventually delivered by a number of kids on our street. It was almost a rite of passage --- you turned 12 and you were eligible to deliver the paper. The one boy gave it to his brother, who gave it to a boy two doors down, who gave it to me, and I later gave it to the boy next door. It paid good money --- I mean, at that age, any money was good money --- and the routine was basically come home, pick up the stack of papers that waited at the curb, grab your bike and a friend or two and take them for delivery.

Well, as it turned out, we had the resident wacko on our street, and of course he was a subscriber. He had gotten in some trouble with the tax authorities at one point and had all these signs all over the front of his house protesting the corrupt government.

I was rather ignorant of a lot of this stuff, being 12 and all, and I later learned that there was a day he was told the police would be there in force to evict him from the home. That day, I rode up and he had the house and property barricaded. His pickup truck blocked the driveway between the fences and he was sitting up on his deck, above the front door, facing the police, with something resembling a rifle on his lap.

My task was to deliver the paper, and as I rode up on my bike with two or three friends, I wanted to make sure he got it. I hopped off my bike, jumped over the fence and started walking toward the front door. (You'd think this would be dangerous, but the delivery bag with all the papers was neon yellow. He could see it was me.)

As I got to the front door, I dropped the paper, then got spooked and started to walk briskly away. That's when the man called down to me from his deck. I turned around and he stood up, then dropped a $20 bill down to me and said thank you.

I picked it up and, again, hurried out of there. It was great having the $20, basically a week's pay, but even better to have friends tell everyone at school the next day that I walked through the police line to deliver the crazy guy with the rifle his paper.

 

[ChrisLong]

In Little League, our freaking first baseman had to leave practice early because of his paper route.

 

[Jake_Taylor]

Ain't scared