This morning I happened to see the newspaper person working our street.
I say person because I couldn't tell which gender from my perspective.
The delivery person was snuggled deep in the bucket of a late model sports car. It's a rural street and the daily paper is deposited in little yellow and orange plastic boxes perched on steel posts at curbside.
All the driver has to do is roll down the window and fire a tube of newsprint into the hole.
Me: Dee! The newspaper person has a sportscar! I want a sportscar!
Dee: (no answer, just a look of disdain)
What are they paying delivery folk these days? How can it be economical to drive a route?
I never had a route of my own when I was a kid. But I 'covered' for other guys when they were sick or went on vacation. I was like a pinch hitter or maybe the DH.
What I learned:
Saturdays will give you a rupture. Too many flyers, comics and magazines stuffed into 18 sections of what is normally a 4 section daily. Also, don't try to ride your bike with two bags of papers on either side of you like some perverse circus clown. At the very least, you'll bend the forks on your gold- flecked banana seat mustang.
I don't remember making much money but I do remember the post mortem after a week of my service. The regular guy had to explain for another week why people didn't get their paper, or why the paper went to the wrong door, or why the paper was in shreds, or who let the dog out, or why the paper was soaked.
I preferred the lawn cutting business.
In our town there's a few old folks who deliver the paper on the urban routes to stay in shape. That's a good idea. Should they succumb to a cardiac event or some other malady they'll be easy to notice and will receive medical care faster than if they were lying on some country lane, slowly watching leaves or the snow cover their legs as scavenger birds draw ever closer.
Shudder.
We don't subscribe to the local daily. We've been tempted by their offers in the past (A whole year for the price of six months, free weekend magazine, sportscar delivery) but I can't quite get over an aversion to typographical errors (I'm an ex-journalist). And the local is full of them. They're like blueberries in a muffin. Sometimes sporadic, sometimes in clumps. To me it looks like sloth. If they can't do a little proofreading then what else are they cutting corners on? It's like a bad movie; I spend so much time looking for mistakes that I can't recall what I read.
Maybe the sportscar driver could go in early and check for mistakes in the copy. The sportscar will be able to make up the lost time.
