Posted on March 13, 2023

I was watching a movie the other night where the opening scene included a paperboy delivering his papers. He wasn’t the focus of the scene, just a passing glimpse - enough to take you back to a time when life was different. Having been a paperboy, this backdrop of the boy on his bike was particularly effective and got my mind running. It has been running ever since.

All birthdays are not created equal. My twelfth birthday was particularly meaningful. I was finally old enough to get a paper route. I am not sure how 12 was the “coming of age” for a paper route, but it was. There we were, a bunch of twelve-year-olds riding bikes heavily ladened with papers, riding down streets without bike lanes at 5 a.m. (Today, I am sure insurance and child labor laws would shut this down immediately.) It was a different time then, when common sense, chivalry, and the basic moral fabric of our country were still intact. Backtalking mom would get you a quick cuff on the head, and spankings were commonplace.

Paper routes were highly coveted and competition was steep. I was a shoe-in for one though. My older brother had been an exemplary paperboy for a year, and I knew the ropes, having delivered his route as a substitute several times. Families were important in the paper route business. Brothers and parents would help out in an emergency. Many times, dad drove us on our paper routes at 5 a.m. before going to work.

I am sure most people are not aware of the complexity of the paper route. It was more like being given a franchise, and an intro to business. You were assigned a geographical area, and in that area, all of the customers were yours. Most routes consisted of 25 to 50 papers. You were sold a set number of papers a day, which you controlled by start and stop orders. On Sundays, your bill came. Payment was due on Fridays. It was your responsibility to collect from your customers every week, and pay your bill on time. You could pay by money order or by having mom and dad write a check to put in Friday’s envelope. Collection was an ongoing mission because you never reached every customer on a given day. Some people also liked to pay in advance, so you had to plan out your advance monies in order to have enough money to pay the bill when due.

My older brother and I both had two paper routes, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Those paper routes taught us much about life; work ethic, generosity, fiscal responsibility, and how to interact with various types of people, to name a few.

I won’t bore you with a 5-mile-to-work-in-the-snow story, but my family was not well off when we were children. I thought everybody wore hand-me-downs and ate bologna sandwiches for lunch. We had a little chalkboard right by the arcadia door that held my brother’s and my names with a number next to each one. That number was a dollar amount. Mom and dad would borrow money from us throughout the year when needed and add it to the totals on the little board. When their tax refund arrived, they would pay us back and give us a little something extra. Between the two routes, we both made around 40 dollars a week.

What America needs is paperboys. Those paper routes taught us much about life, business and relating to people; skills that have served us well to this day. In this age of electronic babysitters, I hope parents can find similar experiences for their children; experiences that will enhance their young ones’ lives now and for the long haul. Just like being a paperboy did for me