Paper boy? That was me in NYC, the borough of Queens, delivering the long-dead “New York World-Telegram & Sun” to about 35 homes. This was a semi-suburban section of Queens, and most of my customers lived in single-family, or at least ground entrance, homes. And the afternoon paper had no Sunday edition, so that was my day off.
I cycled to each delivery on my black Rudge 3-speed and, after a time, on some anonymous single-speed with high handlebars that made it easy to tie on my white canvas paper bag. (Seems I always had multiple bikes.) I never threw the paper towards anyone’s front door. Instead, I walked up and put each day’s paper inside the customers’ screen doors or any other places they asked the paper to be left in. My artisanal style of paper delivery increased the size of my tips. Best bike memory associated with paper delivery: The gift my friends gave me for my bar-mitzvah was money to buy my first 10-speed bike, $55 back then. On the day I planned to buy the bike, I zoomed through my paper route and headed to the bike shop about 3 miles away on my blue single-speed. I knew the bike I wanted, a gold English Racer (another name we used back then for 10-speed bikes), but I cannot remember the brand. At the shop, I was ready to nail down my purchase, but the owner said “Don’t you think your father should be here with you?” My reply: “Why? I know more about it than he does.” Dave + + + + + + + + Hudson Valley NY On Mon, Sep 6, 2021 at 12:11 PM Patrick Moore <bertin...@gmail.com> wrote: > Dave Moulton has an interesting little post on his blog today about > the disappearance of the paper boy. I don't recall ever having seen > one except (always!) in movies, but then we lived when I was a boy in > the US in what was still a semi rural area, and the rest of the time > overseas. All the newspaper deliverers I've seen have been middle aged > people in cars. > > http://davesbikeblog.squarespace.com/blog/2021/9/6/the-newspaper-boy.html > > I do recall working followup for the 1990 census on a bike! (I did > similar work for the 1980 census in my car in a very rural part of NW > Georgia; now that was interesting -- like Deliverance except that the > people were very nice, even though I was -- to them -- a Yankee > Oriental who was asking way too many personal questions.) > > > > -- > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- > Patrick Moore > Alburquerque, Nuevo Mexico, Etats Unis d'Amerique, Orbis Terrarum > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "RBW Owners Bunch" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/CALuTfgssB3OC14TOq9C2n1rVGucMPA%2B79kkacBLTHsPPLw7Szg%40mail.gmail.com > . > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/CANwgLojjBwoo2V3-L7yLoK2o30L%3DCu9J_nWZ-zavOFFfdz%3DdZw%40mail.gmail.com.
