I had my first paper route when I was about 10 years old. Third grade, if I remember right. It was a Sunday-only delivery in Leicester, MA. I think I started out with around 50 houses, and grew to around 100 when someone gave up an adjacent route. The papers were so thick, I'd could only stuff about 10 in my bag at once. Yes, this is when American kids actually WALKED - I've since seen parents drive their kids on their routes.
The hills where I grew up are ubiquitous and steep. I've heard the average grade was steeper than the hills in San Francisco, though I think that's not quite true (but close). I'm pretty sure Apricot Street (where this is all happening here, as Arlo Guthrie would say) in Leicester and Worcester is as steep as the famous Lombard Street in San Francisco (a 27% grade), and at least four times longer. I had to stuff my bag, deliver to the first ten houses, walk back down for more, then walk back up to deliver another 10, etc. Later I took up a daily route in Worcester, starting out at 40 houses and growing to over 100 again, which was not so great for my customers, since it was an evening publication and many nice folks received their papers well after dinner.
It was work, but I had no idea how valuable it was, beyond the $20 a week. It certainly kept me in shape, I met a lot of nice people, and my eyes were open to many different types of folks. I can remember the single mother who couldn't afford to pay me and was months behind. She had to ask a 13 year old to spot her the paper so she could look for jobs in it. There was a religious person who needed to tip me with moral stories. There was the 93 year old who kept her home very cold, not out of choice. She loved when I came collecting (yes, cash, credit cards were invented, but not widely used), since I gave her some company, and I enjoyed hers. She knit me a hat and mittens one winter. The letters my wife wrote me the summer when we were 14 are still wrapped in the ribbon that went 'round that gift. Then there was the 50ish man who tricked me into his bedroom and started showing me playboys before I excused myself, suddenly thinking my shorts were a bit to small for my growing body.
But the greatest gift of the newspaper routes were the newspapers themselves - and the writers who made them alive and interesting everyday. Of course I read the sports section first, parsed each baseball boxscore while in season, and waited on the rare "hot stove" article in the winter. (Unfortunately, this was the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, so I didn't discover Peter Gammons until college). These were long routes however, so I wound up reading everything - the front page and every page those articles lead to. I was a teenager and I knew about what was going on in the world more than most adults (and didn't realize it, which may have been better for my ego). Occasionally the business section caught my eye with something interesting, and though I never really was interested in anything a particular business was doing, eventually I realized I loved macroeconomics and watched everything the Federal Reserve did, followed how the markets and interest rates moved and watched the waves of the economy before and during a recession (which paid major returns to me in 2008, when I timed things as well as I could and did not panic). I've continued having wide interests. I also read so much that good writing was drilled into my mind. I'm sure it's weakened, but it's still there.
Don't expect me to say that those were the good ol' days and kids now just don't know how to write or read garbage. Things change. I didn't know how to network with my friends constantly. You can surf for an hour and come across more interesting topics than any paper has in a month. My parents didn't know how to word process.
[Total tangent, but Susan and I were talking about it recently. Language is amazingly dynamic and comes to suit the time as it changes. Think about the word "fair" - how long did it take to get to four letters? According to
this:
Origin: bef. 900; ME; OE
fæger; c. OS, OHG
fagar, ON
fagr, Goth
fagrs
If it's a good word in common use, it will get simpler and simpler. Read
The Mother Tongue if it interests you . Yes, I know it's controversial among experts, but it's Bill Bryson!]
Newspapers themselves though, and journalism in general, do have ethics to uphold, and they aren't. Newspapers have always been, and always should be, there to balance democracy, to shed light on corruption and injustice, to lend a thoughtful eye and hand to the considerations of the day and time. They have failed, and it's unclear if there is any protection left for the people from the backroom deals that now seem to have their hand at the throat of our democracy. Why? Journalism, such a noble pursuit, is no longer an art, a calling, a public trust, at least outside of some brave poor souls who work for websites and publications that are always on the brink of going under. Newspapers now are about the buck, or a buck for a thousand clicks. It's about working the channel while it lasts. Which is why the Boston Globe's price has gone up almost an order of magnitude, they blame production costs, and then deliver the ads (and only the ads) before Thanksgiving, for free.
The death knell? The Boston Herald, which deserved a quick death 20 years ago, has a new slogan in their ads: "Someone's got to say it." "Someone has to say it" just wasn't colloquial enough?
