Newspapers In The Evening Stephen G. McKenna   © Copyright 2024 by Stephen G. McKenna

Photo by Richard Loller

While attending elementary school, the job of a newspaper delivery boy imprinted itself upon my person as a positive experience. When certain weather patterns take hold in adulthood, memories of this time stir as I mentally time travel to those days.

The newly found and precious sense of financial autonomy felt at that age are still precious for me. As a carrier for one of the city’s main dailies, I would load up my lot of newspapers every day after school and head out: in the winter, on foot; in anything not resembling winter, on my old bicycle.

As an adult, a recently mined memory cropped up while riding my bike from my workplace during a light rain. With my rain slicker safe at home in the hall closet, I find myself not prepared for this type weather as I usually tried to be. The scenario prompted a memory of younger days.

Gliding in the warm drizzle, the pure joy of riding my bike home as another version of myself brought a sense of glee and a smile. Suddenly, I feel twelve-years old again, not forty-eight. With that, memories of my after-school paper route come flooding back. I am at once free, alive, and with great intent, aim for every puddle on the way home. My friends and work colleagues might think this silly of me; a grown man playing in the rain as he splashes through puddles. Or, perhaps we can all use a bit more of this.

It occurs to me this bit of joy is not something one can plan, purchase, or repeat on demand. It is the immediacy of that particular day, the intensity of the memory, the happiness enveloping me, bringing joy and nostalgia straight to my heart and soul. Once again, I am the bushy-headed newspaper boy who reliably delivered the news to those returning from their day’s labour. I am again the kid who wonders what the hell Mr. So & So meant when he said he’d pay me in a ‘fortnight’ (soon cleared up once home). A thought dashes through my mind and, using adult logic, it makes me wonder why my customer made me, the paperboy, carry his debt? Is he practicing to be a politician, ready to run up the debts? I did not appreciate the sentiment then nor do I now.

That negative bit of the newspaper business comes and goes in an instant and does not linger. I am still the adult riding home on his bicycle portraying a twelve-year old in his mind with humble and appreciative happiness that day.

Another memory flashes by: a very realistic part of the newspaper business is that ‘you pay for what you lose’. In the dead of winter, I arrive home from my bi-weekly collection duties, sit down to do my accounts, and realize I have lost a twenty-dollar bill. The parental unit calmly suggests I retrace my path, step by step. Groaning and moaning as I bundle up yet again to face the frigid evening, I head out with a flashlight as my only assistant in the cold and dark post-dinner trek. Following the advice on offer, I retrace every footstep and path recently traversed, each street and cut-through (or across) on snow covered lawns. It is in one of these short cuts the errant bill is located, deep in one of the steps in the snow I’d left going across Mr. and Mrs. What’s-their-name’s lawn. I am overjoyed and, as well, feel entirely clever for having tracked it down with no credence given to the parental advice.

“Whew!” I think, “I made payroll for the newspaper and for me.”

This triggers another memory of my quest to break the tedium of the daily newspaper delivery task: at one customer’s during the winter, I would cut across the lawn from one house to the next and purposely make my footprints seem as if I’d walked through a tree on their property. The left foot went around the left side, and the right, around the right, then back to the left and move on, careful to be consistent in this matter. From their porch it looks as if I’d walked right through that tree. I patiently wait for them to say something but, alas, I am never given the pleasure of them asking, “Um, what’s with the tree business?” Oh well, it made me happy in a slightly devious manner just to do it.

At the start of my last year in elementary school, I did something none of my classmates had done - I bought a new bicycle with my own money. It is the first new bicycle I’d ever owned and was fiercely proud of this accomplishment. There is little reaction received at school but as, for the most part, this did not impress my peers. Satisfaction is finally achieved when a positive response is offered on this topic by the most-desired young lady in our class, who was nothing less than stunning. I sometimes wonder what happened to her and her equally nice and pretty sister.

During my last summer in the newspaper business, I am asked to help a couple of other carriers in the neighbourhood. I took over the competition’s evening newspaper route for two weeks and another’s morning newspaper delivery schedule for three weeks. At the time, it was like having a full-time job, or as close as one could imagine such a thing at that age. Up at dawn to do one newspaper, then, at the end of the afternoon, two more routes to do. Nothing says “all is normal” to the working stiffs of the day than a crisply folded newspaper at the door when they arrive home (or just departing as is the case with the morning paper). It was my pleasure to make sure that happened for not only the few busy summer weeks, but for the entire time of my working in the newspaper business.

Riding home from my job in this adult world that drizzly day, much of my earlier experience in that business comes back to me as a valuable experience. Nowadays, I wonder what the heck I did with the money that profitable summer, then recall, I bought a guitar.

That started me down a path that is a story for another day.

*****

I am a writer of short stories with one published (for free) in a book titled, '101 Things to Ponder During a Pandemic', in London, Ontario. All proceeds were donated to Unity Project for Relief of Homelessness in the same city. There is also a self-published book I wrote and put out: a biography of my maternal grandfather who was Canada's 10th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court 'Grace and Wisdom'. Although well received, as you can imagine, the costs of the research, publishing and all, certainly exceed the book's income. http://www.chiefjusticekerwin.ca