The Gazette-Enterprise

During the 1950s, it was quite common for a young boy like me at age 10 to learn responsibility by assuming the duties of delivering a newspaper route.

Six days each week, I would get my bundles of daily newspapers (The Alameda Times-Star) dropped off in front of our house.

It was frequently necessary to add an advertising insert or two into the paper before my folding job began for each newspaper. During rainy days it was necessary to wrap the outside of the newspaper with a wax-paper cover for protection. This was before the advent of the plastic bag wrappers used today to protect home-delivered newspapers.

The folded and protected newspapers were then placed in dual canvass newspaper bags slung over the handle bars of my heavy-duty Schwinn bicycle.

Each paper had to be delivered (hand thrown or hand placed) so as to have it land in an area on the porch of the house so as to not disturb anything while at the same time having the newspaper remain very visible to the subscriber so they could easily find the paper.

Several elderly subscribers asked me to either place their paper on a porch table or to open their unlocked door and actually place the paper at a certain location inside the front entry of the house — which I willingly did each day.

Even Ernie the barber asked me to bring the paper inside his barber shop, open the paper and place it on the magazine table next to the chairs. I remember bartering with Ernie about the possibility of trading the newspaper delivery subscription fee each month for two haircuts. It was a good deal for both of us and lasted for several years.

There were several vacant lots around the neighborhood stores next to Ernie’s Barber Shop where I would stop each day in search of empty pop bottles. The bottles would each bring two to five cents in deposit refund after I would wash them out and deliver them back to the grocery store.

Every few days I’d have enough bottle deposit refunds saved up to buy a soda and some donut “holes” at the neighborhood bakery near the end of my route. That was a real treat — fondly remembered.

Newspaper boys in those days were also required to bill and collect the monthly subscription fees from their route subscribers.

After my route was completed, on those days near the end of the month, I would come home, eat dinner, and then take my route money bag and receipt book out along the dark streets of my route and begin the monthly collection process — door to door.

When I first began the paper route, my earnings were about $25 per month for delivering 50 papers each delivery day. Two years later, I had grown the route to over 120 subscribers and my monthly earnings had grown to about $65 per month.

My parents taught me to save as much as possible of the money earned and they helped me open a savings account with a passbook that I would take with me to the bank every time I made a savings deposit. To this day, I still have that old passbook and I still bank with the same national bank.

As I reflect back on the many kind subscribers on my route, I realize now just how much they all taught me. I came to know every subscriber on my route and learned many useful life skills from each of them.

I realize now that while serving them as an awkward young paperboy who would occasionally be late with the delivery or would even miss a house now and then, that as a group of adults they had taken it upon themselves to watch out after me and to teach me.

It was a kinder and not so rushed time when neighborhood members really did look out for each other — especially for those who were vulnerable.

There still are a few newspaper boys out there. Not very many — but, there still are some. Maybe it’s time for us as a society to re-think the so-called “progress” that we have made this past half century.

I fear that there will be a day in the not too distant future when there will be no more newspaper boys for us to serve, to nurture, to teach, and to see the future in.

So, where have all the newspaper boys gone ... and why?

Grafe is a former managing editor of the Seguin Gazette Enterprise and a former chief juvenile probation officer for Guadalupe County.

Share | Save | Mail | Print | Comment

Bringing Life To Your Doorstep Since 1888

A Southern Newspapers publication.