A Paperboy’s Story

A Paperboy’s Story,

August, 3, 2024

I grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska, back in the 1960s. My folks designed and built a house in the southern suburbs of Nebraska’s capital city. It was a nice house in a quiet neighborhood full of kids and near the Catholic school I attended.

When I was 12 in 1964, a yellow Karman Ghia pulled up in front of our house. A very large man who looked like John Candy knocked on our front door. I can’t remember his name.

The man, I’ll call him “Candy,” asked me if I wanted to be a paperboy for the morning newspaper, the Lincoln Star. Candy extolled to me the rewards of delivering newspapers, mostly money. I liked money. So, I signed on as a newspaper boy for the Lincoln Star.

The next day, I awoke at 5:30 AM, as I would for the next 3 years, to deliver my paper route every day of the week. Winter, summer, and through all kinds of weather on my trusty 3-speed Raleigh bicycle that my Dad bought me. Dad wanted me to learn the value of hard work and its rewards, or maybe he just wanted to give me a bicycle to help me out. He never said.

When it rained, I’d have to go up to my parent’s bedroom to wake my Dad to drive me around the route in the family Chevy station wagon. Dad never complained. It didn’t rain often at dawn in Lincoln. Snow was no problem, as my bike could handle that most of the time.

I grew to like doing the paper route before dawn when everyone was asleep. It was peaceful. In the winter, I could see the Milky Way and the stars overhead. In the summer, the crickets would still be chirping as I wrapped my papers on a neighbor’s driveway. Then I’d ride away on my Raleigh with the cloth bags hanging from the handlebars full of newspapers wrapped in cylinders by rubber bands. I’d throw the papers onto porches without dismounting. It was kinda fun watching the cylinders of newspaper rotating in the air onto a perfect landing on the porches.

One morning, I fell asleep on the bike and ran into the back of a parked car. I flew over the handlebars and the car and landed in about 3” of snow. Woke me right up.

Another morning, I was going up the driveway on my bike and saw a car going up and down next to me with the windows all steamed up. A face looked up at me from the window with alarm. She was in the 8th-grade class ahead of me in school.

I never said anything about it, but she always tipped me well when I came to collect the newspaper bill due.

The second year I was delivering my route in 1965, a big development went in on the western side. My paper route went from 35 subscriptions to 52. It meant more work for me, but also, more money.

Imagine my surprise when Candy came by the house to tell me that I was one of the top paperboys in the state of Nebraska due to all my new subscriptions (which had just fallen into my lap.)

The following Sunday, I was to be picked up by a bus that would take me and the other top paperboys in the state to the Governor’s mansion for lunch. We would also all win a $25 US Savings Bond. $25 was a lot of money in 1965, at least to me.

The bus drops about 20 of us all-star paperboys from all over the state at the entrance to the Governor’s mansion. We are ushered inside to the big dining room. The table was huge.

Mrs. Morrison, the Governor’s wife, presided as her husband was occupied elsewhere. She was a prim and proper woman in the appropriate 60s attire.

We had celery soup with a small salad on the side and a few tiny oyster crackers.

Mrs. Morrison congratulated us all on our hard work and diligence in delivering the newspapers across Nebraska.

We were then loaded back onto the bus for a special tour of the State Penitentiary. The local cops called it “The Grey Stone College”.

So, there we were, twenty 13-year-old boys being paraded around the inside of a prison populated by criminals, deviants, and who knows what all.

There was whistling and some rude comments, which the guards quickly dealt with. “What a wonderful tour.” I thought to myself.

…

Many years later, in Las Vegas, I told my Dad the story above. He laughed. I asked my Dad if he’d phoned the Lincoln Star and talked to Candy to get me the paper route.

My Dad asked, “You think I wanted to be woken up to help you deliver papers in the rain?” He laughed. “I have no idea why that guy showed up at our house.”
TJM