The first job I ever had: Paperboy!

I had a lot of fun writing that last blog about my time as a vacuum cleaner salesman so I thought I would go even further back in time to the very first job that I ever had. It was as a paperboy for the local newspaper.

I don't think this job exists anymore and I do recall a time that something happened and kids were no longer allowed or no longer wanted to do it and things got changed to an adult in a truck driving on the wrong side of the road (but allowed to) and putting the papers into some plastic thing that was next to a person's mailbox.

I found out why the paper had to put up their own boxes and that is because it is strangely, illegal to put anything into a mailbox unless you are the postal service. Even private parcel services are not allowed to do it. Apparently it is a very big crime if they want to make a big deal about it. I think this is stupid but whatever.

The point is that I was a paperboy at a very young age... like less than 10 years old but I honestly don't remmber.

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This is probably a reasonable representation of how long ago it was that I was doing it. Most everyone delivered the papers on bikes because at least in New Bern, where I grew up and still live, the houses are a bit far apart. I would go immediately after school to a pre-arranged point where the paper delivery truck would just throw a bunch of papers on a street corner and if the weather was good, I would wrap the papers with a rubber band right there on the corner.

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This is making me feel old but I can't actually find a photo of the type of attachment that I had on my bike that was provided by the newspaper company. It was two kind of large canvas bags that attached to the handlebars and also if you wanted, it could be worn with a head hole in the middle. On a bike the head hole just wrapped around the middle of the bike. It took some getting used to since your legs would hit the bags but us boys were all bicycle daredevils back in those days so I took to it like a fish to water.

I could wrap papers like clockwork and while there was some danger and surprises such as the rubber bands snapping and whipping my hands while wrapping them up, for the most part you get pretty desensitized to this after a while. I memorized my route and would whip through and it became a sort of game to me to get the paper on the porch from the street. If you missed really badly you had to get off the bike and retrieve it from some bushes. Mostly I had it figured out but every now and then you would overshoot your throw and whack the crap out of a screen door with a window on it and this would make a loud sound. I was a little kid so the homeowners wouldn't get upset too much. I did land a paper or two on the roof of a house every now and then and the paper company gave us 1 or 2 extra papers for exactly this sort of situation.

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The days that would really suck involved these plastic sleeves for the papers and we had to use those on any day that it rained. This would make the wrapping process take much longer and I just learned to loathe rain at a young age because of this. The really hard rain wouldn't change anything, we still had to do the route. You really couldn't call in sick at all for this and thinking back that was kind of tough on a little kid.

On Sundays the paper would arrive before dawn and we were supposed to get the papers to the houses "before church" which was around 8am. I was a little kid so getting up at that time didn't bother me a great deal back then. I would absolutely hate it now though since Sunday is often the only day I get to sleep in during a week.

The toughest part of the entire ordeal was probably that us little kids had to go and collect payment for the month of papers on our own and there was a certain amount extra that we would get to keep. It was something like $50 a month, which isn't very much now but it seemed like a crazy amount of money in the 1980's. Sometimes we would get lucky and the people would tip me a dollar or two as well.

If it wasn't raining and things went according to the plan I could normally finish my paper route in an hour. The rain would take substantially longer and Sundays were always a pain because the weekend edition was 2-3 times the size of the weekday editions.

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It was a real pain to roll these bastards up and the gave us extra duty rubber bands exactly for this purpose. While I only had like 35 houses I had to visit sometimes those bags on the front of the bike would barely fit that many and things could get a bit dicey.

Other dangers were territorial dogs and for me anyway, there was this one older kid that seemed to get some sort of enjoyment out of attacking me with various things including a slingshot when I would ride by. One day he actually succeeded in hitting me but thankfully my huge paper bags served as armor for that. When my Dad caught word of this situation he made an angry phone call the to the parent of that kid and well, he never bothered me again. I was no coward, but my Dad was correct when he said that the "kid crossed a line, that could kill you!"

I never complained about having a job and even though my parents had enough money to not have me do this they didn't just give me money for really anything. I was taught from a young age that if you want something, you have to work for it. I kind of envied my friends who got everything handed to them but looking back I can see that those same friends were spoiled rotten and were kind of babies in everything else in life including sports and simply standing up for themselves on the playground.

It was just part of my life. I had a routine and I didn't mind it. My parents installed good work ethics in me from a very young age and this wouldn't be the only job I would have as a youth. In fact, I was employed almost all the time since I have a memory of being alive.

The rules have almost certainly changed now. These days I don't think you could leave a bunch of newspapers on a street corner without them being immediately stolen. People will just steal anything these days it seems. Plus there are probably child-protection laws and labor laws that say you cannot employ a kid even though that job wasn't really a job. An hour worth of exercise does a kid some good after all and while this is a potential "ok boomer" moment I believe that all of us that had these opportunities as kids are probably better off because of them.

But then again, there is also the fact that I don't think anyone reads physical newspapers anymore. I rarely ever see them.