Hey! Paper Boy!

All rights reserved by Melvin C. Duncan And Black Cat Prod.

On a hot June day of 1990 I was hanging around the local pawn shop listening to the local gossip. My brother, Joe, approached me and asked me if I would like a part time job.

"Sure," I answered. "Doing what?" I was doing nothing at the time. Having retired from the armed forces some years earlier, I had worked at a lot of jobs. Now that my family was grown and gone, I wasn't hruting for money and wasn't really looking for any steady employment.

"Delivering News Papers," He answered. This sounded like just the thing to occupy some of my spare time. One thing I didn't bargin for was that this job took place in the wee hours of the morning.

"Ok, what do I have to do?" I asked with innocence of a newborn child. If I had known what this was going to lead up to I would have turnd and run for all I was worth. Being 240 pounds, five feet ten at the time I probably wouldn't have run to far.

"Show up tonight at 1:30 AM and meet the woman who wants you to help her. She has been having back problems and wants you to run half of her route for her." That didn't sound to bad.

"All right I'll be there," I promised.

I showed up on time and met the lady. She was pleasnt enough. She turned out to be the district manager's wife. That was ok with me. The lady needed some help so I figured, what the heck, I'm not doing anything else so I'll help her for a few days.

That morning I rode along with her. All went well. It was a rural route and I got to see a lot of creatures that weren't out during the day. Especially deer. Later on that would prove to present a problem.

The next morning I ran the Daily route by my self. The way they set that up was really something. The lady and her husband recorded the directions on a casett tape. I had a tape deck in my pickup so all I did was plug it in and turn it on and off as time and stops dictated. I made the route just fine and well within the time limits set by the District Manager.

Sunday turned out to be quite a hassle. To start with, a lot more people take the Sunday paper than take the daily paper. The papers are about five to six times larger and are a lot harder to handle.

Delivering the daily paper is no big deal. You stuff it in these yellow plastic tubes, where there is a tube. If there is no tube you band it with a rubber band and drop it in the drive or throw it on the porch. If the weather is bad you put the papers that have to be dropped in little yellow plastic bags. Getting the Sunday paper in one of those bags is a real fight. Until you learn how.

Things went along quite nicely for several months. I had only bargined for a part time job lasting a few days. The lady's back was supposed to get better and my job would be done. Little did I know that her back wasn't going to get better. I ended up running all the daily route three days a week and half the Sunday every Sunday morning. Then the bottom fell out. I got a phone call one afternoon.