Newsboys, then girls, The Dyslexic Writer newspapers Newsboys, then girls, by The Dyslexic Writer

newspapers
by
The Dyslexic Writer

My husband and I share the morning newspaper with our daughter who lives beside us. When she worked she got it first, read it at work and brought it home to us.
She’s been retired two weeks. That’s another milestone for old folks. Your middle child retires. That’s another blog.
Now that she’s home in the morning, she sleeps. So I, up early, sneak over and snitch the paper. Then we read it and slip it back it the paperbox. Old folks get up early.
My husband and I were talking after reading the paper, I was holding it and folded it into the old fashioned flat and tucked “delivery” paper that we both remembered from our childhood.
My husband remembered because he was a newsboy selling the paper uptown, and I was a consumer paper reader who rushed to the door early in the morning before school and read the paper laying on my stomach on the dining room floor. The dining room floor because the dining room was away from my parents bedroom and they couldn’t hear me turn the pages or fall over me while I was reading. I tended to read on and on and become late for school. Eventually they stopped the paper so I couldn’t do this wonderful thing. A fact that I still find appalling. However, that was not an era when you would do anything to get a child to read. We read everything, cereal boxes, instructions, the paper,etc.
Anyway, we both looked at the paper and remarked on the flat folding.
“I can do this,” I said, “because someone in our neighborhood had a paper route.”
A paper route for you youngsters consisted of a huge paper bag, filled with newspapers, folded flat, that were slung over the shoulder of the paper boy who either walked or rode his bike and threw the papers in people’s lawns. Sometimes hitting the step by the door, sometimes hitting the roof and other places in the yard, making the hunt for the paper part of the morning exercise. I think the bike rider, especially when he got a bigger route got some kind of newspaper saddlebag deal on his bike.
My husband sold his newspapers uptown on a street corner screaming, “Muncie Morning Star, or Muncie Evening Press. Get your news here.”
I am not being gender unpolitical here by saying “he.” , because for a long time only boys could sell newspapers. Finally because of the feminist revolution, boys involved in sports and after school jobs, it was decided that girls could fill in the gap of the much needed newsboy or girl, out of sheer desperation. And girls going to the newspaper office and explaining they could make change, add and subtract better than the boys. (No, they weren’t up to newsperson yet.)
But I also remember the flat paper because someone in our neighborhood was a newsboy, and every so often there was a crisis. Usually all the newsboy’s parents and brother’s and sister’s helped him fold. In a crisis, late delivery of the papers from his boss in a little truck, rain, the family having other obligations, etc. He called upon neighborhood kids to help fold. Sometimes he let us walk with him beside the bike or walk with him when he walked. This was an important occasion in our young lives especially when he was “an older kid.”
We would fold as fast as we could, have kool aid to keep our energy up and were scooted out of the house as fast as they could because the paper had to be on time.
I was the worst paper folder of all time.
“Will you flatted out the paper, like this, then fold in thirds.”
I would nod, Then struggle away.
That was why I was so happy to remember how to fold the flatten paper. I could finally do it after 50 years.
I slipped the now flatten paper was slipped back into my daughters mailbox. My husband and I kept thinking and talking about newspaper delivery day.
“Girls weren’t allowed to sell downtown,” he said because it was dangerous for them. There were bars all over down town and it wasn’t safe” He was right, he probably wasn’t all that safe for boys. Once in a while they got robbed by bigger kids. The bigger kids, bullies were usually caught. Girls finally got paper routes and saved the day. I don’t remember anything bad happening to them. What was good for all the paper girls and boys was learning how to conduct a business. For those kids with news ink in their blood, they worked and worked and got jobs on the paper they loved. Most started as copy boy’s and girls. Become reporters, editors. Going to college in between the newspaper route process or copy girl or boy process.
Downtown when we were young up was a busy place. People everywhere. People selling pencils out of a hat, people sitting on the sidewalk with a hat in their lap collecting money to live on. Sometimes a tipsy soul weaving down the street. Kids out for lunch or after school swarming the sidewalks, cars lined up on the streets bumper to bumper looking for parking places, horns honking, letting people out or in to pay bills, go to work. It was exciting and interesting.
You couldn’t got though alleys, because your mom and dad said so. “Keep your purse on your shoulder tight.” I don’t what they told boys.
They worried about us, but sent us out into this danger zone anyway. We never saw anything happen to us or others. We’d sneak down alley’s, no one got us. We stepped out of the way when someone weaved, which was not very often. We stopped and talked to everyone we knew, teachers, nurses in our doctors offices, dentists, people who worked in the stores, our parent’s friends and watched the world go by. It was an amazing adventure that no longer exists, at least in our town. Crowded streets, crowded stores, people stopping on street corners to talk or in the middle of sidewalk. Making future appointments. Hearing the newsboys shout out the news and then if it was important folks running or stopping to buy a copy.
It was a different world, a more equal world in some ways. Not in others. It was segregated in eating places, maybe in some stores, and different races were monitored, I’m sure as they walked in a group downtown. I think, looking back, there was a strict protocol. Kids were watched as if they were Jack the Ripper or John Dillinger.
My dad always had to go to town to pay bills on his day off. He paid a few. Mostly he walked up and down, met his friends and talked. Stopped for coffee, a sandwich sometimes a drink in his favorite bar. His friends did the same thing.
Kids could not not wait for Saturdays, the kiddie matinees, a cherry phosphate, French fries, window shopping through all the dime stores, sometimes we had money to buy one or two of the following: comic books, cheap perfume, we always at the music store a book of words to the latest songs on the radio hit parade or other shows, sheet music to play the latest songs on piano or sheet music for whatever instrument we played and needed for our next music lesson. There was a a huge store that sold all the newspapers from everywhere, all the magazines from everywhere and books. I loved it there and always bought a magazine Children's Playmate, and short stores.
Sometimes we had saved enough allowance for a blouse or socks. We did not buy clothes without parents unless previously arranged. By the store and our parents. Some of us went to the library. The children's section because it took 14 acts of congress to walk into the adult library and check out a book no matter how well you read. The fact that you read most of the books in the children’s section made no difference. There was not a young adult section. That came a little later. All in all it was a thrilling expedition. The Malls do not even compare to it.
All the time, in the background, over the cars honking, people talking, the earsplitting cries of: Early Morning Edition, Late Edition Morning, Early Evening News, Late Evening news, the paper boys kept calling. “Get Your paper here.”