This is something that I remember and I don’t think they even exist anymore. The person I remember was bigger than life. His name was Roger Smith. He was one of the smartest people I ever knew. He was also a driven person and really organized. I have to believe that he must have done great things. At the time I knew him he was just a friend. He happened to have a paper route. I would go over to his house on the weekend. Usually on a Friday night. He lived in Riverside which was a great place to live. In the heart of Wichita, near both the Arkansas and Little Arkansas Rivers, close to North High School, tons of parks including Sim Park and Sim Park Golf Course. All these things are significant. He also lived in a neighborhood that had huge trees. In fact every street in Riverside was lined with huge trees that covered the entire street. It was like driving down tunnels covered with big tree limbs. I don’t actually know why that was so important to me. I guess it was because I thought it was beautiful and also our streets were not like that on the Western edge of Wichita. No matter, let us get back to the subject of the Paper Boy. It was like Roger had his own little business. He had to deliver papers to probably 100 houses. Most of these customers he also had to collect from. He delivered the Wichita Eagle. This was at a time when the local newspaper was our daily link to the world. No cell phones, there was TV if they could wedge local and national news in between stories about Tornadoes, Tornado warnings, and Tornado Damage. You get the idea… most of our TV news was driven by the weather and how it impacted our lives. I don’t remember anything about school shootings, terrorists, or the kind of really bad stuff that we hear about today. Sure we had our share of robberies, auto accidents and murders but I don’t remember the news being something that would keep you awake at night. Enough on the content of the Eagle. There was also the Beacon. At some point the Eagle purchased the Beacon so the name became the Wichita Eagle Beacon. The Beacon was the paper that you would get in the evening. Then, of course, there was the Sunday paper. This thing was huge. Enough ads to choke a horse. We subscribed to the Eagle and also got the Sunday paper. My dad would consume all of it. He read everything. I, on the other hand, only read the sports section. I am getting off track… let us get back to Roger.
But before we do I want to mention “Paper Drives”. What is a paper drive? When I was a cub scout we would have paper drives. This was where people would collect and leave stacks of newspapers on the front lawn and we would come by and pick up these stacks of newspapers. Fill a huge truck with paper and take it to a place that would pay us for the truckload of newspapers. It was a fun thing to do on a Saturday. Can you imagine that? Sometimes we would also get discarded magazines. These were even better than newspapers because they were heavier and we got paid by the pound. I don’t think paper drives exist anymore. Looking back we did this before recycling was a thing. I guess we were ahead of the power curve. Back to Roger.
Every morning, rain or shine, sleet or snow he would crawl out of bed while it was still dark out. He would pick up his stack of newspapers that had been left at the specified location at some ridiculous time like 3 or 4 am. Roger would fold the papers and put them in his canvas bag, get on his bike and deliver all of the papers. If it was raining or wet he had to fold them and then put them in plastic bags. All of this would happen everyday and before the rest of the world was even awake. I honestly don’t know what happened if Roger was ever sick. I guess he was not allowed to get sick. Then after delivering all the papers he would return home, get ready for school on school days, have breakfast and go to school. On the weekends he would go door to door and collect for the paper deliveries. He had his route divided in half so that he only had to collect from half of the customers on a given weekend. Pretty cool. I had great respect for Roger. He was probably an honor student, an Eagle Scout and anything else that super people could be. I have no doubt that he probably became a CEO for somebody.
Things were a bit different in our neighborhood. We didn’t have a paper boy per se. It was someone in a car that threw the papers out of the window of their car. It was an adult and we paid for the paper directly to the Eagle. It was more impersonal, but this method allowed for more ground to be covered plus I don’t know if a kid on a bike in the dark was a good idea in our neighborhood. Remember my story about Hoover’s Orchard. I don’t know if a paper boy would have survived the experience. Again, I am probably making more out of the potential dangers than really existed. It would have been hard for a kid on a bike to deliver papers and carry a big stick at the same time. Whatever.
Things change. No more paper boys, no more unnamed people in a car throwing the daily paper out of the window and leaving a cloud of dust in their wake. I think there was something cool about getting the daily paper, hand folded and always on the door step when you got up in the morning. A truly great way to start the day. And today, only a memory… albeit a fond one.
