Paper Boy

I was a paperboy. I had Route #5 for the Mt Pleasant News. It was on the southwest part of Mt. Pleasant. We averaged about 152 subscribers. My assistant, Bill Griest, and I delivered the papers every weekday evening and on Saturday morning. We were responsible for collecting the money from subscribers and soliciting new subscribers when we had a chance.

During the summer of 1959, Carter Challen, 3 years my elder, approached me and asked me if I was interested in helping him with his paper route. After talking to my parents and thinking about it for a while I decided to do it. Carter trained me and I carried about half of the paper for a while and he did the other half. By the time fall rolled around Carter decided he was going out for football so I took over the route and Bill became my assistant.

I needed a better bike so Dad took me to the Firestone store. I picked one out and worked out a deal with them that I would pay them $2.50 a week until it was paid for. It took a little over 6 months to pay it off.

Each day after school and on Saturday mornings the paperboys would gather at the newspaper office. There in a room that contained the huge printing press we would wait for our papers while we watched the big press print fold and cut each paper. When each carrier received his papers he would fold each one into a five by five inch square and then tightly pack them in their paper bags. Bags full, each boy carried them out to his bike and warped each of the bags around the handlebars. It took some practice to learn to ride your bike with that heavy load.

Rain or shine, day in and day out, we carried our papers. Even in the deepest snow, when you couldn’t ride your bike we trudged along with a paper bag over each shoulder. If the roads were the least bit cleared we always took our bikes because we so preferred that over walking which took up to three or four times longer.

Generally, our customers were good to us. At Christmas time they often gave us gifts. Collecting was hard sometimes and customers wouldn’t answer the door or just wouldn’t pay. When that happened the paperboy had to pay for the papers anyway and so we often lost money. The newspaper itself wasn’t much help when that happened. There were customers who yelled at you if you rode on their yard or didn’t place the paper in exactly the right spot. If the papers got wet from rain the customers were often upset as well. The only thing you could do was go back to the newspaper office and get them a dry one.

The newspaper office filled out a complaint form if someone called about a problem. The worst thing that could happen was that a paper got lost or wasn’t delivered. I didn’t get many complaints and I was proud of that. Some carriers got four or five complaints every day. They didn’t last long!

On my bike I could carry my half of the route, about 75 papers, in 30-40 minutes. Walking, especially in deep snow, could take up to two and a half hours. I could fling a paper from the street and hit the front porch of a house at full speed. Sometimes I had to stop and put the paper in a box or a special place like inside the screen door so I lost a lot of time on those.

Henry County Hospital was on my route. I had to deliver the paper to the receptionist desk so it meant parking my bike, walking down some steps and then entering the building. There was a restroom just inside the door so I often stopped to use that and on bitter cold winter days I would stay in the restroom or lobby to warm up a little bit before I finished the route. By the time I was done I had covered all the subscribers south of the highway between Jackson and Van Buren and the area between West Clay and the highway.

The winter of 1959-60 was cold and snowy. My Dad’s daily journal describes the bitter cold and heavy snow that winter. He also made a note every time he went along to help me. Since he worked until five each day the only day he could help was Thursdays, his afternoon off, and he was with me on almost every one.