For several years, from the age of maybe 12-14, I was known and relied upon by nearly every person in the main village of Galway, N.Y., then the “smallest incorporated village in New York State.”
Each morning I’d rise before dark, grab a quick bowl of cereal, don whatever garments the weather called for—my old yellow slicker (I think they were only yellow back then), a baggy sweater, canvas sneakers, galoshes, winter coat, felt-lined boots… I’d head out in the predawn dark with my faithful dog, Tippy, a grungy black and white poodle-terrier mutt, down to the corner where a stack of Schenectady Gazettes lay wrapped in twine, tossed up beneath the small overhang just outside the main door to our local market. Slung over my shoulder was my canvas bag with its thick, padded, reflective day-glow orange strap. If the weather were warm enough, the roads not too wet or slushy or covered in snow, I’d coast down to the store on my red and white Schwinn one-speed with its pedal brakes you pushed counter-clockwise to stop and those white plastic handlebar grips, small indentations for your fingers.
My route extended about a mile or so in each direction along Galway’s four main roads, so I’d ride or walk down one side going out, away from the town center, the other side coming back. If I rode my bike, I’d pre-fold all the papers for each street, leaving the remainder beneath the overhang to gather and fold before heading down the next street. On my bike, all I needed to do was roll up along the sidewalk or pathway, reach in and yank one out,—“stay off the goddamned lawns on your bike,” my manager had reminded me—and soft-toss the paper up onto a doorstep or porch. If I were walking, I’d leave them unfolded, stacked in the bottom of my bag, and I’d fold each one neatly in between houses.
Some of my customers had made special requests. “Put it inside the screen door if its raining so the dripping gutters don’t get it wet.” “Just leave it on the car hood on weekdays so I can grab it on my way to work.” “Could you possibly bring it inside and put it on the kitchen table,” an older woman asked, “that would be so dear of you and make my life so much easier. The back door is always open.” I complied with all requests, though it was eerie always stepping into the old woman’s house in the dark, all the creaking noises there and strange smells, maybe a piece of hard candy left for me, once some prunes on a small plate, which I took to be polite but tossed into the weeds just down the road.
Tippy was a good companion, though he’d often lose interest and vanish away after something his much keener than my senses had detected in the woods and fields between houses. Sometimes he’d emerge later, on a different road, muddy, panting, covered in ferns and burdock, delighted to have scented me out and rejoined me—this in the days when most dogs ran loose. Tippy liked to give chase if we all piled into mom’s station wagon and headed south, knowing the Dairy Freeze was out that way, and if we stopped there, he could catch up to us and with a cute, sideways tilt of the head and lifted paw secure a kiddie-sized bowl of vanilla soft serve.
While most of the work as a paperboy was solitary, leaving plenty of time for contemplation, many a sunrise to witness, Sunday was a social endeavor: collection day. The Gazette had given me a small zippered pouch with a tiny silver key to lock the zipper at one end, and I’d keep it filled with ones and spare change. Inside was my collection book, a palm-sized ledger where I could keep track of everyone’s name, what they owed, when and if they had paid. It was all up to me, just a boy, to make sure I got my one dime for each paper, the Gazette its quarter.
For some of my older customers, I had the sense that I was the one visitor they had gotten all week, and I’d be invited in, offered cookies, milk, a piece of fruit cake, a muffin. One woman lived with her father, an old old man who spoke little English and often sat over an ornate, wooden chessboard holding an extinguished, enormous pipe between his yellowed teeth. She always invited me to play with him, and if I had the time, I would. He taught me the four-move checkmate and tried to teach me other things in his thick, eastern European, maybe Russian, accent. I remember him pointing to the four central squares, imploring “here, here, here, so important,” something I didn’t understand until years later, in college while taking a chess strategies and tactics winter interim course, reading Aaron Nimzovich’s My System, learning what was meant by “controlling the center.”
At another house, a lovely old Ginay racing bike with gum rubber brake levers, slick, rounded, down-tube simplex shifters, always sat leaning against the railing of the covered front porch, and I mustered the courage to ask the woman about it—if she might want to sell it. It was her son’s, away at college, and she’d ask. I got it for $50, my first “real” bicycle. I stupidly sanded away the chipped factory paint and original logo and spray painted it gloss black because I thought that would be so cool.
I loved stepping into people’s homes, having their dogs and cats come up to me, seeing the pictures of their children along the walls, babies, grandchildren, all these other lives all around me hidden to most.
I counted on tips to make more than 10 bucks or so a week, usually a dollar fifty rounded up to two, at holidays always cards left out, crisp 5s and 10s even inside, finally getting home and emptying the bag onto the kitchen table and counting out the Gazette’s cut, seeing what was left for me.
I’m not sure why I’ve found myself thinking of those days today (perhaps the cold, predawn, mid-September Adirondack mist teased those paper route mornings to the foreground of my six-decade-old brain), but as I meander down this corridor of memory, so many other things spring out of the shadows—endless frisbee and bocce and Jart games (in the days when Jart tips were still pointy and dangerous, and my brother Brad famously nearly impaled Alice, the old lady who lived in the apartment beneath us once…), croquet golf, where we’d create long and short holes, par 3, 4, 5s, dog-legs, hazards even—a gravelly, puddle-filled corner of the next door, fire station parking lot the fairway between the “tee” and “hole,” wiffleball games with ghost runners and strictly enforced rules—past the pitcher in the air a single, onto the side porch a double, the roof overhang a triple, the upper facade of the house a home run—catch a rolling grounder without bobbling or a pop fly in the air for an out.
I’m certain many of the things I now value so deeply were forged/awakened in these years—hiking in solitude, natural beauty, riding bicycles, chatting with strangers, imagining other lives (story telling)…. While these memories have sparked many a “when-I-was-your-age” moment with my children and students, more than the discipline or suffering or exercising Horatio Alger-esque American work ethics…I can see now that my paperboy days helped me tune into myself, others, and the wonders of the world all around me.
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What a wonderful recall of memory! I can almost see it as a film. I also did a Sunday morning paper round when I was 12. Round the suburbs of Gloucester, England. Very grey, closed doors, no-one up at that time, heavy papers with all the colour supplement. I remember watching with envy the films of Americans throwing their papers from their bikes! I had to stop, walk up to each door, face the dogs wanting to bite the paper from my hand through the letterbox, taking each paper to pieces to feed them through those letterboxes that were far too small. Oh the shoulder aches! But I loved the quietness of the streets for sure and the memory of following a known route through the streets and alleys.