Newsboy Special II

We called the newspaper depot the “paper station”. There was a man who acted as manager and an older paperboy, a senior in high school, who delivered his route using his car. This boy acted as a sort of assistant manager, mostly a wrangler of all the boys who worked there. 

The paperboy job was a dirty one. Handling the papers, folding and securing them with rubber bands, covered my hands and clothes with newsprint ink. Except for during January and February, the weather was hot and humid making it a very sweaty job as well. 

It rained a lot, too. 

We also went door-to-door asking folks to start taking the paper. People were mostly polite when they said no. One man did quietly say no with a shotgun in his hand when I came into his yard.

Every day I sat on a simple wooden bench designed for the job of folding the papers and while working I repeatedly read the headline visible on the top fold of the papers. I remember there being a map of Vietnam on that fold most every day.

One day, another man came to act as assistant manager, as the boy who delivered his route by car had been drafted into the army. He came by in uniform to visit us before shipping out. I don’t remember seeing him after that.