Extra, Extra...

Growing up in the Mid-1960s in a small town in Southern West Virginia finding a part time job while in high school was not an easy task.

The options were few. You could be a lifeguard, though there were few of those coveted positions open, and our high school football coach believed football players should not be swimming because he felt it created long lean muscles rather than the bulky type he desired. Not having a winning season in many years I would have thought he would have accepted any type muscle. Some guys worked at Kroger, which paid well, but also prohibited you from about all extracurricular activities. In fact one of my classmates, John Bays, went from working there in  high school as a box boy to becoming the CEO of the Kroger owned 110 store grocery chain Dillon's located in the Midwest.

The most popular job among my friends and off season jocks was driving a delivery truck for Rosemont Floral. Rosemont was owned by, probably at the time, the town's only outed gay man. Though I don't believe there was any teenage homophobic feelings, the job just didn't appeal to me.

An older friend of mine, that had been the quarterback of the football team and President of the Student Government was preparing to graduate from high school and was looking for someone to take over his two daily paper routes delivering The Charleston Gazette. Mike Duda, who is now the Proprietor of Charleston, West Virginia's most popular political watering hole called The Red Carpet. Mike had inherited the route from his older brother John, when John graduated from high school and accepted an appointment to West Point. It seemed to me these guys had pretty good pedigrees and this might be a job that would make sense for me.

I went out on the route a few mornings to deliver with Mike. I realized this was going to require a great deal of discipline and responsibility. Waking up at 4am was a heck of a sacrifice for a high school kid. But I liked the idea of being independently in business for yourself, and actually have the opportunity to increase your income by selling more customers. So with Mike's reference and an interview with the local circulation guy. I was a Paperboy. This included all classes, football or basketball practice, any other extracurricular activity. Basically about an 18 hour working day. This is where my sons roll their eyes and say it was uphill walk to school both ways for me.

The Hotel Hill

The bundles of newspapers were dropped off at the door of the town's only hotel, the Hotel Hill, on Main Street between 3:30 and 4:00 am every morning. Every morning, seven days a week, twelve months a year, rain, snow, hail or high water. The 180 newspapers were bundled and secured by tightly bound wire. The number of bundles varied to the time of year and day of the week. Sundays may require five or six bundles, where a Monday in January may just be two, depended on the advertising pages. Though the revenue would increase for the Gazette the Paperboy only had more weight to carry at the same fixed rate. To this day when I read the editorials in this same newspaper of how the 1 percent are squeezing the poor, the hypocrisy is not lost on me. I wonder what those same people were doing at their prep school dorms and living off their trusts while I was doing this.

The walk to the Hotel

It was about a a 15 minute walk from my warm bed to the Hotel Hill where I would find the bundles waiting and always carried pliers to clip the wires. You were given white canvas shoulder bags to carry your papers. Some days and all Sundays it would take all three hung around your neck and shoulders. Once the bags were loaded the walk began on toward the first customers house about another 10 minutes then the route became fairly dense with the majority of the houses being customers. One of the first things you perfected is the fold. The ability to fold the newspaper tightly so that you can pitch it with accuracy onto a porch. Once you have perfected this talent the delivery process speeds up considerably plus it adds a level of sport to the job in sharpening your accuracy of your  throw to a porch. There is also a fold you can do when there are not too many pages, that is a small tight square that flies like a Frisbee, fun, but can take off and land on a roof or hit a storm door breaking a glass, which deeply cuts into your profit margin.



Several customers would have special requests of where they wanted their papers placed as the mailbox, behind their storm door, or not to fold. This usually accompanied a nicer weekly tip so well worth the time and another great lesson for business. I had one couple that rose early every morning and ask if I could always have their paper to them by 5:30am, which I did and was richly rewarded with a $50 Christmas tip. Also on my route was Lundale Farms, a huge farm owned by Herbert Jones, and was a multi millionaire coal baron of Amherst Coal. Everyday I had to walk 20 minutes longer to deliver to the side porch of his mansion where his chauffeur /manservant would retrieve the paper for Mr. Jones. with this level of service and relatively speaking of the comparable wealth and my level of additional service, I would most certainly receive no less than $100 for Christmas from him. When I went to the side porch of the mansion of Lundale Farms to do my weekly collection, Rastus invited me into the kitchen because he had something for me. That same sound that you hear from slot machines was running through my mind. Rastus returns to the kitchen and hands me an envelope and a gift wrapped box about the size of a shoe box. I thanked him and took them home to open and add to my Christmas tip fund which was over $175 at the time and was sure would loft me near $300. I opened the box and it was a white gift box from Frankenberger's, which was the best men's store in Charleston at the time. I opened it and it was a black shaving kit. A freaking shaving kit. So I was ready to open the envelope and cha ching. As I ripped open the envelope and slowly opened the card to see if it was cash or check, there was neither, simply a rather generic Christmas Card wishing me well from the Jones Family. My mother tried to, as only mothers can do, console my disappointment by saying it was better because it showed they had actually put thought into the gift. I said Ma," I don't even shave yet." Another great life lesson. It was that same feeling Ralphie had when he found out his decoder ring was a rip off.

The route started here on Jones Avenue

At that time of the morning in a small town you are one of few people awake and probably the only person out. It would be so quiet you could hear the town's two stop lights noise when they changed from red to green. There was never any traffic, when there was snow there was no traffic to break it, so I would wade down the middle of the streets a couple of times I remember nearly up to my knees and I was over six foot. I would dress in layers, including two pair of socks and gloves and still be numb with cold. All for about $20 a week.

At that time you not only had to deliver the papers 52/7, but you would have to spend your weekend evenings going door to door to collect the 60 cent weekly cost from your customer and pay your bill every Saturday afternoon, regardless of what you collected you paid your bill and what was left was your profit.

Collecting, though time consuming was usually enjoyable because you got to talk with most of your customers, get your tips, and hear compliment and complaints. You also learned people will stiff you and not pay their bills even though you have to pay yours.

Many people like W. Clement Stone, T. Boone Pickens, Walt Disney, Ross Perot, Harry Truman, Bob Hope, Dwight Eisenhower, and Norman Vincent Peale to name just a few were paperboys. In reading Boone Pickens biography last year he attributed most of his business success to the experience. I unfortunately have no where reached the level of success of these folks but can say it is a hard experience, but a good one in retrospect.

Kids don't deliver newspapers any longer and you rarely see or directly pay whoever delivers your paper, if in fact you still get one. A shame.