Paperboy Memories

 

August, 2021

I found an Op-ed column in our local Tulsa paper this week to be a fascinating account of the life of a paperboy here in Tulsa in the 1950s and early 60s. My wife suggested  I should draft my recollections of our similar experiences in Memphis, TN over the same timespan.

The Tulsa paperboy delivered the Tulsa Tribune afternoons six days a week. He then had to arise pre-dawn on Sundays to deliver the Sunday paper. He found this a bit onerous.  

Like Tulsa, Memphis had both a morning and an evening paper in the 50s. The evening paper, the Press-Scimitar, lasted until 1983, while the morning Commercial Appeal is still published.

My older brothers and I were Commercial carriers. (At this point my kids and grandkids will be wondering if I ever did anything not previously attempted or accomplished by those aforementioned brothers. They could point to this first job as well as to our school band involvement, playing the French horn. I would contend, though, that these two examples are the exception rather than the rule.)

We each started our “careers” with the Commercial Appeal at age 11 or twelve (I forget.)

As Commercial Appeal carriers we arose around 4:00 am seven days a week. The “paper station” where we obtained our supply of papers for the route was a ten minute, half mile bike ride from home.  During inclement winter weather Dad would sometimes arise and provide car transportation. But that was not often. The paper station was an open room with cinderblock walls located on the back side of Tull’s Buntyn Café. It contained eight or ten standup wooden tables where we could load our cloth satchels for carrying our papers up and down the streets on our route. There was a manager of the paper station, Harry Nash. His job, besides hiring paperboys, was two-fold. He made sure every lad showed up each day and would telephone those who overslept to get them going. He managed somewhere over 20 routes from the Buntyn station. Once a week we also had to bring our week’s collections.  Our “wages” came out of our collections, but we turned in the lion’s share of those collections to the paper’s coffers. (I think on my first route I netted maybe $25 a week.)

Most of the routes close to the station consisted of 90 to 100 houses. The routes out on the outer edges of the Buntyn territory were “car” routes for the older boys and could have 200 or more potential subscribers. A typical route managed a 90% subscription rate in those days.

Besides serving the route every day and being the collection agent for the paper, we also had to provide our own substitutes for planned, scheduled absences. Mr. Nash would find someone when we called in sick or were a “no-show”.

One of the much anticipated highlights of the day was the trip home after the route was done.  That usually involved a stop in McLauren’s Bakery on Highland Street to grab a pair of four cent cinnamon rolls.  There were none better to my taste. I typically arrived home in time to grab a final hour’s nap before being called to breakfast and to dress for school. Mom’s normal morning wakeup call went, “Boys, this is the third time I’ve called you”.

Reaching driving age, I bid on one of the car routes. My “take” must have increased to something like $40+ a week. The best aspect of these routes was that they were “monthly” routes, meaning we didn’t have to go back trying to collect every week but could get by with once a month. Getting $2.20 each time was vastly better than 55 cents.

Noteworthy anecdotes from the years we threw papers will require a slower paced journey through my memory (and maybe an assist from Arthur and Paul).

Patriot Third Party

 

As my kids know and others can attest, I have for at least 40 years referred to myself politically as a “Radical Moderate”.  I include the adjective “radical” to differentiate from many people’s conception of “Moderates” as indecisive, shallow thinkers who aren’t interested enough to find out what’s going on and make decisive choices.  I could just as easily call myself a “conservative” Democrat, but that would be just as misunderstood. There are certain moral issues about which I have definite private opinions, but which I believe should not be addressed through legislation and governmental action. I will skip for now a lengthy discussion of examples on both sides.  But I do offer this introductory paragraph as a prelude to my thoughts on current politics.

Many people across the political spectrum decry the efficiency of America’s de facto two-party system as it seems to be straining in 2020-2021. This leads them to call for the emergence of a third party to solve whatever they believe are the failures of the status quo. The latest efforts have been public musings by Donald Trump himself suggesting he might form a “Patriot Party”. One assumes he means by this he would take with him all the “true Republicans” who were not RINOs.  The obvious observation is that this would be the opposite of expanding his base and would, therefore, fail.   Not only would the Patriot Party be a fringe party, the Republican Party they left behind would be more akin to the Republicans of the 50s and 60s in terms of size and strength.

As a Democrat I could navigate through those waters. But as a moderate I’d still strive for a more perfect party. That is to say, I do think a third party could succeed and even improve the American political landscape if it was positioned as a mainstream moderate party. A good 30%  or more moderate or conservative Democrats might have more in common with moderate Republicans than with the fringe leftists in their party. A Republican Party freed of its “Patriot” element might be open-minded enough to forge an alliance with enough moderate Democrats to produce a center party strong enough to win elections.

I doubt this will occur, though.  The gaps in the parties’ approaches to economic justice and civil rights issues will take more time before sufficient common ground is achievable.  Even the moderate wings of their parties. But one can dream.