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).
