The Paper Route

Between the age of twelve and fifteen I traveled by foot and bicycle the equivalent distance of a trip from my hometown in East Tennessee to New York, then cross-country to Los Angles and back to New York.  That would have been some educational trip if I’d really been able to do it, but I doubt I’d have learned any more than I did traveling all those miles on the streets and sidewalks of my own hometown.  For about four years, seven days a week, rain or shine, hot or cold, sleet or snow, I walked or rode my bike, delivering the newspaper to customers on my paper route.

In the 1950’s less than 9% of Americans had regular TV service and I’d say that percentage was much less in rural East Tennessee.  Of course, radio was available, but most folks depended on their daily newspaper to stay informed about state, national and world events.  A fairly simple network of trucks and district managers in automobiles got the papers from the Knoxville-News Sentinel’s downtown location to every small town in East Tennessee.  But, the final leg of a newspapers daily journey from the printing press to the reader’s door was the hometown ”paper boy” traveling his paper route.

The days of the “paper boy” have been gone for many years now, replaced first by automobile deliveries, then network television newscasters, 24/7 cable news and on-line news available on your handheld “thingamajigger.”  Ever since Johannes Gutengerg developed movable type and pulled his first printed page off the manual press, time and technological innovation have continually moved us further away from printed news.  But in its day, the daily newspaper was the media king that kept American’s entertained and informed.  The other little known fact is that it also gave one of the richest learning opportunities available to a twelve year old kid.  Here are some of the details of my paper route experience.

The Route

The route was a defined territory of streets or areas of a town assigned to some kid who was responsible for delivering the paper to subscribers living along the route. In the 1950’s, most routes had existed since the late 1920’s when the Knoxville News-Sentinel became the primary newspaper for the Knoxville area. As paper boys would come and go, as new houses were built, routes were sometimes merged or divided and would reconfigure over time.   My route went from the west side of town to the eastern side and covered approximately three miles.  It served pretty much middle-class professionals in the central portion of town, but included blue collar factory folks on each end of town.  I had a few customers who were day laborers and just eked out a living by whatever means they could find.  When I first began the route I picked up my bundle(s) of papers at Howard’s store/cafe.  This alone was a treat since they had a pinball machine just inside the front door.  A nickel was a good ten minutes of diversion if you played the five balls just right and scored enough points to keep you playing.  On a hot day, a good cool soda pop or a “brown cow” ice cream gave you a good boost to begin your route.  The route taught me that I had a responsibility to fulfill, but I could also enjoy life at the same time.

 Customers

Over the years my route had anywhere from 75 to 90 customers.  Dealing with these folks gave me a lot of life lessons I could not have learned from my family.  My family was too nice.  You had to learn to deal with the old grumpy man who wanted his paper in a single fold and placed exactly in a certain place on the front porch.  You got to deal with the family who never seemed to be at home when you came by to “collect” the weekly payment for the paper.  You had to learn to deal with those who would answer the door, but said they didn’t have the fifty-five cents for this weeks payment; “Pay you next week,” they’d say.  And on the other side, there were those who always paid on time, were gracious and kind every time you saw them, and some who met you every day to personally receive their paper.  Learning to meet and talk with all kinds of people was one of the most valuable lessons I learned during those years.

Dogs

I’ve always liked dogs and had my share of pet dogs over the years, but delivering the paper gives you a whole new perspective on dogs.  Your mission is simply to deliver a small folded paper to the porch, door or box of a person’s home.  Not too difficult to do unless there is a dog living there who thinks he owns the property and half the street.  He thinks it is his job to protect it from all trespassers.  Most dogs eventually learn that you are a “regular visitor” and soon become your friend.  There were a few who even after three years never figured it out.  You were still the enemy and they were going to get you.  A dog named Rags was such a dog and gave me my only flesh-breaking, bleeding bite while I was making collections one evening.  The owner had paid me and as I turned to exit the front porch, Rags burst through the screen door and took a nip on my right calf, breaking the skin. 

 

A dog of a personality opposite of Rags lived just across the street; a beautiful male collie named “Flash.”  Every day, Flash would greet me at his house and continue along with me on the route for about a mile or so, then cut back across town and head home.  I distinctly remember one day as I was passing an apartment complex, a dog sleeping on the front stoop of an apartment suddenly charged out towards me.  I caught a blur of motion in the corner of my eye and in the next instant;  Flash was on top of a very submissive attacking dog.  I walked on past and then Flash moved off the dog and joined me on the route.  A humbled mutt crawled back to his stoop and never offered to bother me again.  Flash was the best dog friend I ever had! 

 

There was another ancient male English sheep dog along the route that I fondly remember.  His name was Halsey; owned by a local doctor and named after Admiral Halsey who the doctor had served under in WW II.  I don’t know how old Halsey was, but he was always friendly and liked to go with me along the route for some distance.  He was the typical looking sheep dog look with long curly coat and eyes barely visible.  His only claim to fame was that he urinated on every sizable tree along the route; must have been his age. 

 

I can’t forget my own dog, Nancy, a little overweight mixed breed white Spitz who never met a stranger.  She went with me most days unless I rode the bike.  She might begin, but would turn off and head home when she got tired.  Nancy was always glad to see me when I got home.  The paper route taught me that people can be unpredictable, but once a dog is your friend, you’ve got a friend for life.

Finances

If you had a paper route you were actually running a small business.  You had a bill to pay each week for the papers (product) that you received from the newspaper publisher.  You delivered the product to customers and collected payment from the customers.  You had to deal with disgruntled customers and those who were “dead beats.”  If you didn’t get all your money from your customers you still had the “bill” to pay to the publisher for the week’s papers.  You had to pay some of your profits into a “bond” that the newspaper publisher held for you in a secure account.  You contributed a certain amount weekly until it built up to a specified amount and then the publisher held it in an escrow account.  If you ended up owing money for papers, or disappeared, owing the publisher money, he’d take his money from your bond.  If you ended your business relationship with the publisher on good terms, you would get your bond returned to you.   

 

When I began my route, the Knoxville News-Sentinel subscription rate was 55 cents per week; five cents for each daily and twenty-five cents for the Sunday.   I averaged about 80 customers, so that equaled a weekly gross collection of $40.00.  The paper boy’s take was around ten cents a customer each week, so that gave me about $8.00 profit each week or around $35 / month.  That was pretty good for a twelve year old kid back then and I always had enough money to go to a couple of movies each week, stop in at the local bakery for a pastry or two, save a little and tithe.  My goal was to save for a motorcycle.   My savings goal was achieved in 1956 and I went to the local Sears Roebuck Catalog store and ordered an Allstate Motorcycle.  It was delivered by motor freight to our house and the driver unloaded the big wooden crate in which the bike was packed.  What an exciting day that was for a fourteen year old kid.  I kept the bike until sometime in my senior year of high school and then sold it to my cousin. 

 

Here is a picture of my 1956 Sears Allstate Motorcycle

 

The paper route taught me how to handle money responsibly, how to keep records, pay my bills and budget my personal earnings.  It taught me that you can achieve a goal if you will stick with it, work hard and exercise the discipline of regular savings.

 

 Paper Route Experiences Worth Remembering

The Naked Lady - Growing up in the 1940’s & 50’s you were pretty sheltered from "worldly encounters" compared to what kids are exposed to today.  However, the paper route afforded me my first live glimpse of a fully nude female form.  I was collecting one Saturday afternoon from customers whom I’d missed on Friday.  I walked up to the door of a home on a street where some of my well-to-do customers lived.  The front door was open with only the screen door closed.  No one answered, so I stepped closer to the door and knocked again.  Glancing into the house I could see a full-length mirror just down a short hall.  In the mirror was the full frontal image of the lady of the house without a stitch of clothing.  Apparently she was standing in a bedroom, either dressing or examining herself in the mirror.  Needless to say, I did not knock again, quickly dropped the paper and headed on down the street.  I collected another day and apparently she was never aware of the incident.  I will have to admit that I had seen pictures of naked women before, but not a live person.  In sixth grade, Oscar Phillips, used to bring black & white photos of nude girls leaning across the hood of his car and show them to guys on the playground during recess.  What, 6^th grade you say…well Oscar Phillips was sixteen years old and still in sixth grade.  He shaved, used cologne, and had interesting pictures in his billfold.  He also had a driver’s license.  But that too, is another story.

The National Guard – On Sundays I began the route well before daylight and finished in time to eat breakfast and get ready for church.  One Sunday morning in September 1956 I was delivering papers and was nearing the end of my route.  It was about 7:30 AM.  My route ended on Suwanee Street about a quarter mile from where Highway 27 crossed the old bridge that funneled traffic into town.  I was about a block from where the road split for the business district traffic and the truck route.  Suwanee Street was the truck route and at that point I heard a lot of loud mechanical noise headed my way.  In just a few minutes I saw what was making all the racket; 15 or 20 large army tanks rumbling up Suwanee Street, one after another, with the heads of solders in uniform sticking out of the gun turret and the driver’s ports.  The waved to me as they headed on up Suwanee Street.  There were numerous army trucks following them loaded with more men in uniform.

 

This is almost identical to the tanks I saw on that Sunday morning in 1956

We learned later that day that Governor Frank Clement had mobilized 600 Tennessee National Guard troops to go to Clinton, TN to stabilize the volatile climate that had been brewing since school started and the courts had ordered the integration of Clinton High School.  The governor had also mobilized 100 Tennessee State Troopers and all were descending on Clinton, TN that Sunday morning in early September 1956.  The National Guard and the Highway Patrolmen did quell the unrest, but it took some months and years to fully integrate.  Clinton High School was bombed and virtually destroyed in 1958.  The Black students who attended Clinton High were called the “Clinton 12” and have been memorialized in a life size bronze sculpture at the Green McAdoo School in Clinton, TN.

 



News photo of some of the "Clinton 12" as they walked down the hill in 1956

from their all Black School to attend Clinton High School

The Preacher’s Mama -   I delivered newspaper to old and young alike, but one of the most unique old people on my route was the mother of a famous Baptist minister.  The minister was born and raised in Harriman, a graduate of Harriman High School, but he’d been gone from home many years when I began my paper route.  In fact, he was well established and traveling world-wide about the time I delivered newspapers to his mother.  His mother was a very quiet and reclusive type of person and I never had more than a casual conversation with her in the years I delivered her paper. 

 

But it is interesting how life circles back on you and that is how it was with this lady’s son, the Baptist preacher.  When Becky and I were living and working in Haywood County, NC from 1967 – 1970, I was a counselor at Tuscola High School, just across the highway from Lake Junaluska Methodist Assembly.  Part of my responsibilities at Tuscola was to assist with sponsorship of the school’s National Honor Society.  My co-worker had arranged for a guest speaker for the installation ceremony, a gentleman who headed up the Interpreters Institute at Lake Junaluska.  She said he was an excellent speaker and the kids really enjoyed him the year before.  The speaker’s name was Carlyle Marney, the son of my "old lady" customer from many years ago on my paper route.  Marney was a fascinating character and “shook up” a lot of folks theologically and otherwise during his sixty-one year lifetime.  He was delightful to sit with informally and just talk about life.  Each year, when he spoke at our Honor Society, we had some time when we could sit and talk.  He’d pull his pipe out of his coat pocket, fill it with tobacco, pull out a wooden match and strike it with his thumb nail and begin to puff and talk.   I could connect with him and talk about his mother and his hometown, but he would usually shift gears and talk about the cosmos, current events and eternity. He had a powerful intellect and a gifted way of expressing complex thoughts.

 

Carlyle Marney 1916 - 1978





A Thing of the Past

For me, the paper route lasted about four years and then I passed it on to another kid.  I hope he learned as much as I did and had as much fun in the process.  

 

The last actual walking “paper boy” I knew was my father-in-law, Ben Watts.  After logging 50 years with the Stokley Van Camp Company in Newport, Ben retired from Stokley, but picked up his neighborhood paper route in the late 1970's.  It kept him busy each day and his doctor said it probably prolonged his life many years with all the walking and interaction with people.  

Mr. Ben with his canvas paper bag about 1980
Newport, TN

Mr. Ben has been gone since 1993 and so are walking type paper routes.  It is unfortunate that paper routes are no longer an option for kids growing up in small towns today. There may be some locations where they still exist, but not very likely. In a recent web search, all of the paper delivery jobs I found required the “carrier” to have a drivers license. Not much chance for a twelve year old kid to get a paper route today, but for this twelve year old kid the paper route provided a lot of practical learning that has lasted a lifetime.

I'm taking a week off, so no ramblings next week.

I'll ramble again on June 6th.