Paperboy
by Ed Higgins—Age 64—Yamhill, OR
Sometime in the late ’60s I had this paper route for the San Mateo Times. I pedaled my young adolescent ass from downtown Redwood City (on 4th. St. where we picked up and folded our papers) for miles along El Camino thwacking front doors, shrubs, or sometimes sleeping cats with papers flung from my speeding bike. Then more miles down Middlefield Rd. where a single-minded German Shepherd named Rex and a pathological Doberman I called Satan were excited to end my life Monday thru Saturday around 4:30 PM daily.
“Nice Satan, nice boy. Oh, sure, go fuck yourself you sicko dog bastard. Eaten any babies lately? Why don’t you do me a favor and go kill Rex up the street!”
Then finally our Hoover St. neighborhood of friendlier dogs where my mother’s friends handed out smiles at their front doors and cookies at Christmas, and usually paid their subscriptions on time when I came around collecting once-a-month—always hoping one of them would come to the door naked sometime.
“Oh, sure, Mrs. Wilson, I’d love to come in for some of those cookies.”
My newsprint-stained canvas bike bags were stuffed to excess with hatchet-folded papers banging against the rear spokes, catching at my heels turning corners or jumping curbs. Lots of rainy, cold winter or ninety-degree summer afternoons on my J. C. Higgins I pursued this slack Norman Rockwell dream.
But why anyone in Redwood City wanted the San Mateo Times remained another inexplicable fucking adult mystery to all us reluctant paperboys (Oh, and one girl, tough as hell, named Gail, who could beat the shit outta any guy who gave her wise-assed lip about being a paper-boy!).
Whenever George, our DM—our District Manager (but we called him, “George, our BM Manager”), forced us out on summer evenings door-pounding, hustling subscriptions for cheesy prizes like Giants baseball caps, imitation Boy Scout jackknives, or hooded rain slickers with eight-inch high fucking San Mateo Times letters emblazoned on the back for Christ’s sake!
Or, for a half-zillion new subscriptions, a flashy new Schwinn with all the chrome trimmings.
I never won shit.
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