Our Newspaper Published A Big Issue

T’was the night before Thanksgiving and the newspaper was so thick tonight, for delivery in the morning, that the inserts (normally just added to the paper) were in two separate bundles, instead of merely one. We had to clear the insert storage garage and we also had to get all the bundles made up and out at the carriers’ pickup spots in advance.

Back in the days when I delivered newspapers on my bike, with a large basket in front, the Saturday route was easy; the papers probably didn’t have twenty pages to them. Wednesday’s were heavy and I had to make two runs – usually so heavily loaded in front that my rear wheel was not touching the ground enough for the brakes to be effective.

I don’t think a paperboy, -girl or whatever could stack five of tonight’s edition in even those large bike baskets. Perhaps many of the papers are delivered by car, as this area gets rural very fast.

When I was doing my route, I had 92 customers ranging from nearly one end of our village to the other. There were only five of us and I think I was the second biggest. Had I been more ambitious, I probably could have bought the route next to mine on the west and added another 50, tops. You paid the current paperboy fifty cents for each customer you bought from him (the only “her” worked with her father out of a car and controlled quite a bit of the place, customers I wanted).

For some reason, I never “owned” my own street. Odd.