The Paperboy

My saddle bags were full as I rode slowly down the graveled lane. Beneath me I could hear the ever-present clip, clip, clip, clip. The old girl was due for a check-up.

This was the area of the ambushes. They were happening almost daily now. I lowered my hand and felt the cold steel of my gun butt. It gave me little confidence.

Suddenly the birds in the trees stopped chirping and erupted with an explosion into the air. Rabbits ran for cover in the thick blackberry hedgerow. He was out there. I could feel him. A bead of sweat rolled from my hairline.

“Where is he? Where is he?”

Suddenly, lunging from behind the cover of a Chinese Boxwood, he grabbed for the right saddle bag, shredding some of the exposed contents. I kicked hard on old Bette, and she leaped forward. He regrouped, ran forward, grabbing my right pant leg.

“Mongrel from hell!” I screamed. A canine tooth tore through the skin on the back of my leg causing me to lose balance and fall off my bike. I was on my back in the grass and the dog was pulling my pants off.

Kicking at his head with my left foot, the snarling beast refused to release his grip. I pulled the pump pellet gun from my belt, released the safety, and fired one shot into his right flank. With no power behind it, I might as well have shot him with a rubber band. He yelped and ran back to the front porch of the house.

Yes, this was a daily occurrence when I was a paperboy for the Herald on route 264.

At the time I delivered newspapers, 264 was the largest paper route the Herald had. I would ride old Bette, my three speed Schwinn to the Marine Drive Thriftway which was a mile from our house. There, the Herald van would roll up and the driver would toss four bales of newspapers on the ground. There were two for me and two for the other paperboy, Rick Luke. The two of us would then take off in different directions and deliver our routes.

I took over 264 from an upperclassman at my school named Rick Lingbloom. I was 14 at the time. Had I known what was involved, or let me put that differently . . . had my dad known what was involved, I never would have gotten the route. It was my first paying job and what I thought would be my road to financial independence.  My road turned out to be full of potholes.

In the late 60s and early 70s the Herald gave their paper-people, (to be politically correct), almost nothing for free. I believe that they did throw in a paper carrying saddle bag, which was two large canvas bags with a large hole between where you put your head. It was worn on the shoulders like a poncho – newspapers on your chest and newspapers on your back. A flap of material covered the newspapers to protect them from rain. (Excuse me while I laugh uncontrollably.) If you had a bike with a back rack, your saddle bag hung over both sides of the back wheel. This put so much weight on the back of the bike, the front wheel would rise into the air every time I pedaled away from a mailbox. “Whoa Bette, whoa! Down girl.”

All the newspapers were slid in a Herald paper tube mounted next to the mailbox. None of the papers were tossed onto the house porches, porch roofs, into the hedges, or the dog’s water dish. It was simply against company policy to accept calls from angry customers complaining about where they found their paper this time.

By grabbing the newspaper in the center of its back rib while pulling it from the saddle bag, I would fold it in half once and in half once again and slide it into the tube. This was all done rapidly in five seconds with my right hand and although a useful skill to have, I found that the learned maneuver was meaningless when placed on my adult job resumes.

Having the largest route at the Herald, 264 had +/- 180 papers and was 3 miles long. At Thriftway we would fill the saddle bags with the baled newspapers. The Herald would give you exactly what you needed, no more, no less and the paperboy got charged for each paper. Finishing the route and having two papers left over meant I forgot someone. Being two short meant I had to ride back to Thriftway and buy two with my own money.

The average weekday Herald was thick enough that all papers would fit in my saddle bags. The Sunday paper with the comics and ad stuffers made the papers so thick the two bales had to be baled as three bales and required two trips back to Thriftway to deliver them all.

Then came the Thanksgiving/Christmas season where every store wanted a flier stuffed inside the paper. The width of the papers jumped from ½” thick to 1 ½”. Unbelievable. The back and chest muscles on a 14 year old boy are spaghetti noodles at best. Finishing a Christmas season delivery left me with round shoulders, premature hunchback, and bike seat rash.

Nowadays, the Herald bills the subscribers for their subscriptions. Life would have been so much easier. When I was 14, we had a book with a page for each subscriber and a unique paper punch to mark the month being paid. Once a month, I would ride Bette to each home and attempt to roust someone to the front door. The common reaction was for the lights to go out in the house. It was how I learned about the trickledown effect in the business world . . . the Herald gets their money first and the paperboy gets trickled on.

The paperboy, like the mailman, delivers rain or shine, daylight or darkness, hot dry days or below freezing. When the paperboy doesn’t feel like delivering, he gets his dad. This was my go-to choice at 5:00 am on Sunday mornings when it was raining hard or freezing. More than once, the canvas piece of material which covered the saddle bags, did nothing to keep the newspapers dry and nothing makes a customer happier than 1 ½” of dripping pulp. Therefore, I would play the dad card.

Scenario: It’s 5:00 in the morning. The house is black, and the temperature inside is below 55. I look out into the darkness, and it is either, A) Dumping rain, or B) An ice storm blizzard. Why would I want to ride old Bette in weather like this? I knock on my parent’s bedroom door.

“Dad.” There is no response.

“Dad!” I say a little louder while tapping on the door.

I hear a snort and a groggy and slightly irritated, “What?”

“Could you take me on my route?”

I hear non-discernable, mumbled words and the fumbling of clothes. He steps from the bedroom still unable to open his eyes.

“Bleh!”

I don’t know what that meant but I follow him to the car, and I get to deliver papers from the warmth of the front seat while listening to KOMO radio.

This repeated itself many times due to inclement weather, broken bike parts, and flat tires. Fathers should really be warned before a child takes a paper route. It is after all a family activity.

All told, I kept route 264 for two years, delivering six days a week. Though the Herald often said that the route had too many papers for one deliverer, it wasn’t until I gave it up that they split it into two routes.

The paper route was a way for me to earn money, an amount which seemed good to a 14-year-old.  Had it not been for that dog, I may have kept the job longer. Then again, it was the combination of the dog and the two small hellion boys who also lived at the house that helped me make up my mind to quit.

It was late August. I was nearing the house where I knew the dog would be waiting. It was his little game, a game I wasn’t going to put up with any longer.

An old apple tree grew on the edge of the front yard. Apples had fallen from the tree and were scattered around the yard and out along the edge of the road next to the paper tube. Old Bette, her pedals needing grease, made their normal clip, clip, clip sound with every rotation. There was no sign of the dog yet, but I knew he was stalking me, waiting for the perfect moment to attack. As I rolled to a stop next to the paper tube, I bent down picking two large apples up off the ground.

Suddenly, with a blur of fur, he ran at me barking from his hiding spot underneath the front porch. It was clear that he was going for my right pants leg again.  This time, I jumped off the bike and pummeled him with apples, cursing the demon spawn back to hell. With two direct hits, he yelped and ran back to the house.

“Finally, I fought him off!” I felt the victory as I climbed back on Bette’s seat. Reaching into the saddle bag I grabbed a newspaper, folded it twice and slid it into the paper tube. That is the last thing I remember before waking up on my back with a double gusher bloody nose.

“What happened?” I moaned.

The two hellion boys stepped out from their yard. Both held two apples each.

“Don’t you ever hurt my dog again!” the older one yelled. For a small kid, he had an amazing pitching arm with an apple.

That was the day that I decided that the cold, the rain, the dogs, the early Sunday morning hours, the heavy and thick newspapers which broke my bike, and chasing after customers to get paid, just wasn’t worth the money I earned anymore. That was 52 years ago.

The newspaper was the way that families got their local news. The Herald had advertising staff, multiple reporters and photographers, printing, and stuffing staff, and a multi-floor historic building with a neon HERALD sign on the roof. Now all that remains is the sign. The papers got thinner and the value of that paper, to me, was not worth the cost. Covid then struck and decimated the printer like it ruined other businesses. What is left of the Herald, is a digital publication which is twice the cost of the newspaper I delivered in 1969.

So, was I beaten by the dog and the two young brothers?

As I lay on my back with blood gushing from my nose, for the first time ever, the dad of the house heard the noise and came outside to see what all the commotion was. Naturally, he was shocked and somewhat fearful to find his paperboy lying in a pool of blood and to hear that his son had shot him off the bike with a direct nose hit from an apple. He was also concerned to learn that the family dog took great pleasure in tearing my pants off. After all, this was police report and lawsuit material.

Epilogue:

I called him Maverick, a 21-speed road bike with all the bells and whistles and no bent parts or squeaks. It came straight off the bike shop showroom floor and amazingly showed up at my house as a gift.

So, I guess . . . I won.

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