Sunday: Get Holy, Get A Newspaper

Where did you get the Sunday newspapers back in the day? In front of the church; at least the Catholic church, in my RC experience. Maybe the Protestants, for all I know.

There was a strange working relationship between pastors and newspaper vendors which I always found disturbing, even in my younger days. People standing there with tables loaded down with newspapers waiting for the end of Mass so the parishioners could pick up their choice of the Sunday sheets.

The biggest selection seemed to be up in Stratford at St. James Church, the largest in town. Business was jumping there even before the closing hymn. Out where we lived, things were pretty virginal and pristine until, years after I had left, I went back and there were the hawkers.

I told the pastor we should concentrate on providing religious services and let the drugstore three streets away concentrate on providing the newspaper. I really did not care a whole lot about the people standing there making a living from the blessed of God; that’s not the place nor the time.

He did get rid of them and we went back to being a simple, weather-beaten plain church out on the end of nowhere. I don’t see much of that anymore and maybe it’s gone out of favor. The pastors may have told the convenience stores: “We don’t sell papers; you don’t provide religious services.”