My career as a journalist started at age eleven.\u00a0 I had been tormenting the local Area Distribution Manager for the Sacramento Bee since I was nine.\u00a0 Technically, you had to be twelve to be old enough.\u00a0 If you waited until you were twelve to ask for a route you failed to show enough initiative and started out at a disadvantage to us nine year olds who had been hustling substitute jobs from the local paperboys.<\/p>\n
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Doug, the local paperboy, lived up the street.\u00a0 He had been our paperboy for several years and was reaching the age where the \u2018fumes were interfering with his career.\u00a0 It was getting difficult for him to meet the bell on Sunday Morning.<\/p>\n
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My Dad was the one who clued me in.\u00a0 The fumes?\u00a0 Perfume and gasoline.\u00a0 They start affecting teenage boys at different ages, but in my era it was around age sixteen.\u00a0 That\u2019s when you were old enough to get your driver\u2019s license.<\/p>\n
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Patsy, Doug\u2019s sister, had been delivering his papers since he got his license.\u00a0 She was a year younger than me but was losing interest.\u00a0 I was their substitute, had been since I was nine.\u00a0 The Area Manager was skeptical of me because of my age.\u00a0 I kept reminding him that I was a year older than Patsy.\u00a0 He said he couldn\u2019t buy that one since the route was actually Doug\u2019s.\u00a0 I think he was just testing my resolve.<\/p>\n
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When I was substituting I always got all the papers to the right customers, pretty much on time.\u00a0 In those days you could make about twenty-five bucks a month as a paperboy. \u00a0 A virtual fortune.\u00a0 Sure beat the hell out of selling the Saturday Evening Post for a quarter; or Grit, for a nickel a copy.\u00a0 Don\u2019t even mention selling Christmas Cards.<\/p>\n
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One day when I was eleven, Patsy told me that she was quitting.\u00a0 I don\u2019t really remember why but I think she had finally saved up enough for a horse.\u00a0 Doug called Mr. Lovell and formally resigned.\u00a0 I was hovering around when he came by to pick up the canvas bags and receipt books.\u00a0 The interview was grueling, but since I knew the route I was a shoe-in.\u00a0 Patsy even vouched for me.<\/p>\n
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I always read the front page, the funnies and the editorials.\u00a0 I learned about people, about economics, journalistic integrity and bureaucracy.\u00a0 The most important survival skill was handling mean dogs.<\/p>\n
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Particularly Sophie\u2019s dog.\u00a0 She was the smartest kid in my class at school.\u00a0 She lived about half-way through the route.\u00a0 Her mother could not hear so they had a big Lab that guarded the place.\u00a0 Particularly from the paperboy.\u00a0 I always kept a few choice rocks in my canvas newspaper bag for emergencies, but I preferred to use detente.\u00a0 I hated to use the rocks because I had to answer to Sophie.\u00a0 Not only was she smart, she was as tough as most of the boys.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t afraid of her but I didn\u2019t want to tangle with her either.\u00a0 That dog chewed a hole in more than one set of my canvas bags while I was in full retreat.<\/p>\n
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The best thing, after the money, was you could win trips to the State Fair, Disneyland, the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, and other places if you got enough new customers.\u00a0 There were regular contests at the same time each year.\u00a0 They regularly sent solicitors out to walk your route with you and sign up new customers.\u00a0 I learned that customers who stopped their paper while they were out of town were actually new customers when they resumed service.\u00a0 That was how you really got good stats.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t too sure about the practice at first.\u00a0 The solicitors were eager to write them up since we both got credit for a new customer.\u00a0 The more new customers we got, the happier everybody was.\u00a0 It was all in how you wrote the story.\u00a0 I sure enjoyed the trips and got to know a lot of my fellow journalists from around the state while we were traveling. I was never challenged with the fact that the overall customer count on my route did not seem to reflect all of the new customers I got every year.\u00a0 It was journalistic integrity.\u00a0 There was more truth in our stats than in a lot of the editorials.<\/p>\n
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I learned to deal with customers who didn\u2019t have enough money on hand to pay.\u00a0 There were also a few customers who complained about everything.\u00a0 I ultimately refused to deliver to some of them.\u00a0 It was an enlightening, empowering and enriching experience. \u00a0 It was all business.\u00a0 We paid for all of our papers whether or not our customers did.\u00a0 We were expected to deliver seven days a week 365 days a year; regardless of weather.<\/p>\n
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When I was fifteen, I actually had two routes for about a year.\u00a0 The money was good but\u00a0 I was burning out.\u00a0 About the time I got my driver\u2019s license I learned that I could make a lot more money washing dishes at a local restaurant and my early life as a journalist was over.<\/p>\n
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Writing a blog should be a piece of cake.<\/p>\n
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My career as a journalist started at age eleven.\u00a0 I had been tormenting the local Area Distribution Manager for the Sacramento Bee since I was nine.\u00a0 Technically, you had to be twelve to be old enough.\u00a0 If you waited until you were twelve to ask for a route you failed to show enough initiative and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":144,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions\/144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}