Hey! Paper Boy!

"I'm quitting," she informed me. "If you want the route its yours. If you don't we have someone else who is interested," I was informed.

Like a big fat fool, I said, "I'll take it." Boy did I ever take it. I got the thing and couldn't get rid of it. I've tried selling it, giving it away, paying someone else to run it. Nothing works. Around here we have a little morning show on the local radio station called THE TRADING POST. If you have an item you can't get rid of you can call in and list is for free on the TRADING POST. The listeners will buy anything but for some unknown reason trying to give something away is impossible. If one puts a price on it the listeners will ring your phone off the hook but put something on for free and its no takers. I have even put my route on the TRADING POST. That lady seen a sucker and jumped with both feet. I must have lollipop stenciled on my forehead.

So, on Decemeber first 1990 I made my first solo run. It was a Sunday morning. Half the Sunday route I had never been over and it was foggy. It was so foggy I could barely see the check lines on the highway. I fumbled my way through the route using the casett tapes and a crude hand drawn map.

All went fairly well until I got to the town of Shirley Arkansas. I made a huge discovery. Shirley had no street signs. I found out real quick what the map was for. One little problem. It had no N, S, E, W on it. No compass reading in a town without any street signs. Which was the top of the map? Which way was North on the map?

I'm a sailor. A twenty year man. In that time I learned a little about navigation. Navigating this place was a mess. Shirley has a lot of little cross streets that go nowhere.

After making several false starts, I managed to find all the stops but one. I found that one Monday after the fog had cleared.

December was uneventful outside getting lost a few times.

In January the Arkansas Democrat, our paper, started talking about buying the Arkasas Gazette. The Gazette people were up in arms. I'll never understand why. The Gazette was going to be sold regardless of who bought it. A paper in California had a bid in for the presses. The computer system was being bid for by a paper up north. The buidings were being bid for by a warehouse company that wanted more room. The Gazette employees didn't consider this though. They took their spite out on Democrat employees. Legally, I'm not an employee, I'm a private contractor by definition.

One morning I showed up at the bundle drop to pick up my papers. There were no papers.

My Brother was running the Clinton route. He showed up a few minutes after I did. Together, we started hunting. It took us two hours but we finally found the papers. Someone had thrown them in a trash bin behind the grocery store where we usually picked them up.

A few days later they disappeared again. This time I found some of mine floating in the river. Some were in the next town in a trash bin. I managed to salvage enough to service the route customers but the vending machines were out of luck that day.

I wouldn't want to accuse anyone but the Gazette carriers looked pretty guilty.