By Darren Johnson
Campus News
I was a bit saddened to learn that New York State, with a line in its most recent budget, is ending the possibility for youth under the age of 14 to deliver papers.
Not that any youth were doing this anymore.
But this surely was a coming-of-age job for many, including myself.
(In fact, I’m still doing it — I just delivered one of my papers yesterday, at least to store racks and the post office!)
In my back pocket, I had the idea of hiring local youth to deliver papers door-to-door, should the US Post Office finally call it quits.
For the longest time, youth under 14 were only allowed to do three paying jobs in the state: Acting/performing, which is obviously huge in New York City, especially; Farming, which is big up here and even on parts of Long Island, still, and Newspaper Delivery.
Greedy newspaper tycoons probably had lobbied to allow kid labor, but us kids didn’t mind it. It was nice getting some fresh air and having a few bucks in one’s pocket.
I got my first route at 12, in Utica, NY. A girl, I think her name was Rebecca, or maybe Sarah, had the route before me, as she and her dad took me once in their car to throw papers for “training,” to see how it was done. I must have had a small crush on her, as I remember trying to call her a couple of times after taking over the route with inane questions about the route as an excuse for making conversation, but she ignored my calls. She was slightly older than me, so, if she is still with us, must be nearing 60 now — yikes! (Just a joke, dear readers — but time does fly.)
Then I did it for four years, until I was 16 and could get an hourly job at a local convenience store.
Four years — it was pretty much college-length, and as formative.
Doing a route like that is amazing. I still have dreams of doing that first route.
There were deliveries, and there were collections.
How I got the papers was bundles would be dropped on my doorstep in the early morning hours. They’d maybe give me 2-3 extra copies, because the papers sometimes got damaged. My route maxed at 90 houses, give or take.
I’d sell the extras to people on the route who were no longer in the newspaper’s database. At least for those papers, I got the full buck or two a week, but for the papers that were accounted for by the newspaper company, I believe I only got 24% of the gross.
A grown adult would come and collect from me, and I’d give him a bunch of crumpled bills and loose change in an envelope.
The margins were lousy, as some people would leave town before I could collect, or hide behind the sofa when I’d ring their bell, or refuse to pay because maybe their paper got damaged, or was missing a section. Such losses came out of my end.
Kinder people made up for the deadbeats by tipping. Those who did tip typically gave quarters, which was great because a new arcade had opened on the route, in a former caboose just off of the railroad tracks, which ate my quarters like Pac-Man ate dots.
Each house had its own smell and situation going on. A couple of times slightly older teens answering the door would offer me a beer. I’d decline.
One time, a teen who had died by crashing into a garbage truck’s accident scene was pictured on the cover of the paper I was delivering to the saddened house. I thought about not delivering that paper, but still did. I guess I always had a sense of the news coming first, and they would have gotten the paper somehow anyway. I waited several weeks after the accident to collect, and the dad, who resembled Captain Lou Albano and had lots of wild daughters scurrying around that house, came out and peeled off several one dollar bills from a wad with a rubber band, no problem, with a kind and thoughtful glance.
Another time, one of my customers, a lawyer, had been killed in the house via an alleged mafia hit. I didn’t happen upon that crime scene, but read the story — in the paper — and stopped delivering there and ate the loss.
The route was year-round. High heat in the summer, piles of snow in the winter. To this day, I’m still good at not being bitten by dogs. Being invisible to predators is a skill. Postal workers have that skill, most Amazon drivers don’t.
I eventually saved up enough to get a 10-speed Huffy bike (yes, many kids bought their own things back then), which made zipping around the route easier — until I was hit by a crazy guy in a jalopy car, the bike mangled, and I was sent flying 20 feet. By that time, I had taken some judo lessons, so knew how to roll safely.
A friend said I wasn’t injured because I carried a few extra pounds as padding, pointing at my soft belly, which, back then, was considered being morbidly obese. However, I look back at pictures and feel I was pretty normal weight, in retrospect. I never got restistution for the bike.
Later that decade, a nationwide tragedy started happening with paper carriers being abducted everywhere. Newspaper companies eventually transitioned to using adult carriers who used their cars, as opposed to bikes and sleds (yes, you can use a sled in the winter to drag papers — they never show this in nostalgic movies, but it was a thing).
In college, I had one of those adult routes — delivering The New York Times in a fancy neighborhood. At Christmas, I’d make $4000 in tips! If only I had bought Apple stock with it.
I didn’t think childhood paper routes were ever going to make a comeback, but I liked the idea of it being a possibility. It’s sad when possibilities end…
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