Making Money - Paper Route

Jobs were more available to teenagers when I was a teen.. The federal government was less intrusive and minimum wage was not an issue.

In 1958 I decided to build a hut in the back yard. There was some scrap lumber in the shed on the back of our property and I figured (actually I did not figure anything) it would be great for building a hut. I used four ten foot long 4X4’s to frame the bottom of the hut. I put these on some bricks to keep them off the ground. I don’t think I even leveled them.

At this point I needed some 2X4’s for studs and the scrap lumber pile was woefully short of 2X4’s.

So I asked my dad to buy me some at the lumber store. His comment was something to the effect that If I wanted come 2X4’s, I could buy them myself. But, Dad, I don’t have any money. Well, get a job.

Not bad advice, but that meant I had to find a job.

Grocery stores would not hire 11 year olds.

But, the Beaumont Enterprise and Journal would let 11 year olds have paper routes. It worked out that they needed a carrier for route 100 which was about a mile from my house. The Enterprise was the morning paper and the Journal was the evening paper. A carrier had to deliver both.

My first job was as a paperboy. I had a route that included the morning Beaumont Enterprise and the afternoon Beaumont Journal. I think I had around 75 subscribers, some to the Enterprise, some to the Journal and some to both. Monthly subscription prices were $1.75 for one paper or $2.80 for both. Part of my job was to collect the payments – and it was a colossal pain, trying to find people home, waiting for them to write a check and so on.

The morning routine was to wake up about 4:30, and get dressed (warmly in winter), I rode my bike to the Pinecrest Dry Cleaners at the corner of Magnolia and Pinecrest. Mr. Daigle, the distributor, would show up there about 5 AM and give us our papers.

It took about 15 minutes to fold my papers, load them into canvas bags, hang the bags on the handlebars of my bike and go ride the route.

I got good a throwing the papers and hitting the porch or sidewalk. It was nasty in the rain and I typically walked the route wearing a poncho over the bags holding the papers, ending up soaked to the bone. I finished up the morning work by about 6:15, crawled back into bed and slept ‘til 7 or so.

There was an old guy on this route who scared the bejezus out of me. I was delivering papers in the 5-6 AM time frame in the dark. I would be riding on his street and he would surprise me by appearing suddenly out of nowhere, stop me and quote scary scripture to me. One of his favorite phrases was, “The moon’s gonna turn to jelly blood and all the souls in the sea will die.” This delivered in an old man’s shaky voice, with a reddish moon rising in the east was enough to really frighten an 11 year old.

For the afternoon, Journal, deliveries, I repeated the same process after school around 4:00 to deliver the Journal to about 60 subscribers.

On Sunday there was only the morning delivery to make. I hated Sundays because this was the biggest paper of the week. Let me recall:

– Sunday – gigantic – Monday – Ok – Tuesday – OK – Wednesday – OK – Thursday – bigger – weekend shopping advertisement – Friday – OK – Saturday – smallest

Each month I had to take my subscription book and collect from each subscriber. I would spend the first week of each month collecting and sometime around the tenth would meet with Mr. Daigle to pay for my month’s supply of papers.

Within about three months, I changed from route 100 to a larger route 203 which was closer to home.

I made about $50/month at this job. This was a fortune in 1957 and I learned to be a spendthrift. I spent a lot at the local 7-11 on candy bars, donuts, soft drinks and general junk food. I would also occasionally buy a burger at Pak-a-Burger, Tews Hamburgers or the Rexall Drug Store on Concord.

This excess food was why I was never svelte in junior high school, despite a couple of 7 mile bike rides twice a day. I was pretty good at riding my bike, throwing papers and pounding down a hamburger.

The delivery part of the job was ok except in rain or cold – I guess about half of the time. I recall wearing a poncho and trying to keep the papers dry. The collecting was always hard with some people who would not pay promptly.

I have a recurrent nightmare of oversleeping and awakening to phone calls from irate customer wondering where their papers were.

The newspaper company made me pay $10/month into a ‘bond’ account. This was to make sure that they would get paid if I overspent my collections. It was forced savings and turned out to be a good idea for me.

My bike was my essential transportation for the paper route. I typically had sturdy American made bike with no gears and a coaster brake. I could hang the canvas bags full of folded newspapers on the handle bars. I almost always rode hands off and threw the papers to both sides of the streets. I made a game of trying to hit the porch or the sidewalk.

Maintaining my bike became a critical skill. I learned how to change out the wheel bearings n short order, including packing the new bearings with axle grease (thanks, dad). I had good luck with tires and spokes and only occasionally did I have to dismount a tire.

The paper route was hard on the bike, the extra weight was probably outside the design limits

Toward the last year or so of my route, our papers were delivered to Charles Hollis’s house about a half a block south of our house on Idylwood. We folded papers on his front porch. I do recall sometimes folding the evening paper on the floor of the living room while watching afternoon TV (Three Stooges, Our Gang and cartoons).

This gives you and idea of the canvas bags I used to deliver the papers. On Sunday they were stuffed to overflowing and on Saturday I could probably handle the entire load in one side.

Imagine how these changed how a bike handled when they were full and hung over the front wheel on the handle bars.

The paper route lasted from ‘57 ‘til ‘60.