Delivering a newspaper can be a lot harder than riding a bicycle

By BILL ARCHER

My family moved from our farm on Beham Ridge to a house on Main Street in Claysville, Pa., in October of 1961, and I went from having almost every moment of my personal life filled with farm chores to being a townie. On the farm, I cared for 30 sheep, about 30 chickens, a dozen steers and cows, four dogs, a few cats and one horse. I still had plenty of chores to do that fall, but my young life had changed.

I spent the winter shoveling sidewalks — some for pay and others for free — and in the summer, I put an ad in the weekly newspaper for mowing lawns, “Have Mower. Will Travel.” Business was slow at first, but I eventually picked up one lawn from a very particular lady, Margaret Sanphilips, who owned a small grocery store in town. Her father, Joe Sanphilips ran a shoe repair shop in the building. He was from the old country, my mother said. Mr. Sanphilips and his daughter lived in an apartment above the store. Miss Sanphilips was exacting about the trim work around her flower beds and I learned a lot about detail work from her for my $2 per week.

Jimmy Dreamer lived on the back ally behind our house and had a stripped-down 20-inch bicycle. It was a typical American bicycle with one speed that you pedaled backwards to stop. There weren’t any brakes on the handlebars. It was about as basic as a bike can be, but I had never been on a bicycle before, and Jimmy let me take it for a spin on the cement slab in front of Tim and Goldie Walker’s garage.

One ride was all it took. I was hooked on the idea of riding on wheels. I had been driving our tractor and riding our horse for a few years by that time, but suddenly the freedom of powering a bicycle with my own feet and riding on comfortable rubber wheels and inner tubes. I wanted a bike like Jimmy’s. He told me I could have it for $12.

I didn’t have $12, and it would take me more than a month to earn that much from the one cash customer I had with my lawn-mowing business. Of course, that was only six weeks if I didn’t buy a bottle of Lotta Cola or an ice cream, and that was a lot for me to sacrifice. Dad told me the bicycle wasn’t worth $12, and urged me to save my money all year long to get a new bicycle, but I really wanted Jimmy’s bike.

A week after I took my first spin on Jimmy’s bicycle, he came to me with a proposition. He told me that his family was planning to take a trip somewhere to visit family for two weeks, and said I could give him $2, and cover his newspaper route for the two weeks he was gone to earn another $10 to buy his bike. It all seemed too good to be true. Jimmy earned the money to buy his bike on the paper route in the first place, and I could earn enough in just two weeks to buy it from him. We had a deal.

I paid him the $2 I had in my pocket, and he let me keep the bicycle on the spot. I spent the entire evening riding around in circles on Tim and Goldie’s cement slab. I was going to meet Jimmy the next morning at 4:30 a.m., to walk his paper route with him. That was Saturday morning, and they were getting ready to leave later that day. I loved the spontaneity of the plan.

The next morning, I folded papers with Jimmy and walked the route with him, and tried my best to memorize his customers. He had a print-out of the names and addresses of his customers, but I knew where everyone in that side of town lived anyway. As we walked along, I was thinking how easy this was going to be the next day, riding my new bicycle on the route. It took less than an hour on foot. I reasoned that it would probably take 30 minutes on my new bicycle.

I went down to the Dreamers’ dark porch the next morning at 4:30 a.m., to fold the papers and ride my bike on the paper route, but the papers weren’t there. I waited and waited, but they still didn’t arrive. Finally, at about 5:30 a.m., a truck came along and a guy threw the bundles on the porch. Bundles? On Saturday morning, there was only one small bundle. That morning, there were two big bundles of the Washington, Pa., Observer. Daylight was coming as I tried to fold the papers. The 58 papers on the route filled two canvas bags, and there was no way I could ride a bicycle to deliver them. I didn’t finish my route until after 8 a.m.

I was sorry, but I did the best job I could do.

During the next 13 days, I learned a lot about myself, about dealing with customers, about making deliveries on time and about how hard newspaper carriers really have it. I was really happy the morning that I walked down to the Dreamer’s front porch and the light was on. I was glad to hand the job back to my friend Jimmy, but even happier that I earned enough money to pay for the bike. I never had the desire to take over a paper route again, although I did substitute for Jimmy in the months and year that followed.

Times have changed, but I remember those two weeks each year when Christmas rolls around. I think about how hard my paper carrier works every day to get the news to me. I work at the newspaper, so I know how hard it can be, but none of my work gets to the readers without the work of our newspaper carriers. I appreciate them every day and find an extra way to thank them at Christmas.

Bill Archer is a senior editor at the Daily Telegraph. Contact him at barcher@bdtonline.com.

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