When I was quite young, I was a big fan of comic books, the precursor to my early novel reading. I eventually discovered mystery & adventure books. But for a time, comic books were my thing. I liked the Disney comics with Daffy Duck, Uncle Scrooge, Mickey & Minnie to name a few. I liked superhero comics like the Amazing Spider-Man, Batman, and Thor. I would read them again and again, never tiring of them.
But one of my favorite things to do was flip to the last page, the page with all of the exotic offerings available for purchase. I could find items like X-Ray Specs and Sea Monkeys. There were joke accessories like Joy Buzzers and Black Soap. The page was filled with one fantastic purchase after another. The prices were fairly reasonable for a young boy’s discretionary budget, and there lie the problem. I had no budget to speak of.
I decided to get a job. I found my opportunity posted on a billboard at our local grocery store. I would start my own paper route. I applied for the job by making a phone call on our kitchen rotary phone with the extra-long phone line. My mother loved the freedom her extra ten feet of phone line gave her whether she was reaching out to the dining room to retrieve her tea cup, doubling back to assess the progress on the stove top or simply taking off her shoe and pointing it at her children in the living room who were, as she would say, “at it again?!”
The man on the other end of the phone line addressed me like an adult and I took on a more serious demeanor. Did I have a bike? Yes, I did. Was I able to work on Saturday mornings? Well, yes, I could. So it’s a weekly subscription, good to know. “How much does the job pay?” I inquired into my new business opportunity. “It pays a nickel a paper” “How many papers are we talking?” I stepped further into this potential position. “I can start you off with a hundred papers. But, if you promote yourself, you can grow the route and make some serious cash.” I found some paper and a pencil and did some quick math. My arithmetic told me that I was going to be bringing in $5 a week. That’s $20 a month. That’s $240 a year. That’s a whopping $2,400 in a decade. Slow down, Mike, you are getting ahead of yourself. There’s a fair chance you might not want to run a paper route for ten years. But hey, you can grow the route like the man said. That just sounds like good business sense. l should take the route.
“Hey Kid! You still there? You want the route or not?” he blasted into the phone “Oh sorry sir, yes, I will take it. I can start this Saturday” I stated. “Good. Then I will be by at 6am with a pile of papers. You have to fold them and then deliver them. I will give you a list of homes in your neighborhood that are existing customers. Listen, this is important. You have to do a good job and get those papers delivered by 10am. If not you will lose customers and then you will lose your job. Got it?” “Yes sir!” I hung up the phone. I had my first job. I went into the living room and jumped onto the sofa with a comic book and turned to the last page. I was finally going to be a paying consumer.
Saturday came and I was up early. As I was finishing a bowl of cereal, I heard a car pull into our driveway. I met Mr. Faulklan. He didn’t seem to own a smile but did have a cigar sticking out of the side of his mouth. He stepped out of his car and opened his back door. He grabbed a 100 stack of papers wrapped in twine and threw it on the ground in front of me. It was the first time I heard that sound that would soon become all too familiar. “Here’s the rubber bands and a bag for carrying the papers. Best get started. I’ll be back next Saturday with another stack and your paycheck. Oh and here’s a list of your customers. It’s sorted by streets. Good luck!”
By 7am I had my papers rolled and banded. My fingers were black from newspaper ink. I filled the cloth bag with my route of papers. They just fit. After several attempts I found it best to tie the bag to my handlebars. I thought this would make it easier to deliver. The only problem was, the kickstand couldn’t hold the weight very well. The bike tipped and the papers went flying. I gave it a second try and found my bike was more balanced leaning against a tree in my front yard. I returned to the house to tell my mother I was off and grabbed a jacket. As I pushed off (a little wobbly) and started down the road I began to think about how funny it would be to shake my brother’s hand with a joy buzzer armed and ready, and how funny it would be to see what underwear people were wearing with my fancy X-Ray Specs, oh and Sea Monkeys, of course.
According to my route list, my first customer was coming up, one street west of my block. I stopped my bike, stood and extracted my first paper. I had seen paperboys before and their experienced skill of launching the perfect toss and moving on. I decided to give it a try. I threw the paper at the front porch, but I had a very poor (weak) throw, leaving it in the middle of the street. It was run over by a car before I could retrieve it. I decided to walk this first one in. House number two was better though. I made it into the front yard. I set my bike down and got the paper and put it on the front porch. House number three went better still. I actually hit the front porch but it bounced off and into the shrubs. I set my bike down and shagged the paper. When I returned to my bike I had to pick up some papers that had fallen out of my bag. I looked at my watch. I was not moving fast enough.
Block after block I experienced similar scenarios until I had only a few papers left. I had a couple of perfect tosses but my last paper landed on the front porch at 10:30am and my customer was already outside waiting for the paper. I soon learned that a late paper can make adults grumpy. I rode into my driveway with a couple extra papers, tired from my first day of work and mentally deflated a bit. It turned out this job was harder than I expected. But not to be so quick to surrender, I decided to practice in the street in front of my house until I could get a better toss. I must have been out there for hours because my mother finally opened the door and said that dinner was ready, “and stop hitting the house with that paper. You’re going to break a window”
Next Saturday was here before I knew it. Mr. Faulklan was right on time and a new stack lay at my feet when he handed me my first check. “Wait, something is not right. I thought I was getting $5. This is a check for only $4.50″ “Son, you lost some customers. Keep it up and your paper delivering days will soon be over” he said choking on his cigar. And then he was gone.
My bike was filled and ready to go. I rode down the road this time not thinking about Sea Monkeys or Black Soap. Rather I focused on my paper pitching practice that I had kept up all week. I stopped at my first customer. FLING!!! into the air the paper flew and landed perfectly on the first step of the porch, center. A smile came to my face. House number two was exactly the same. When I approached my third customer I decided to gamble on not stopping the bike, an air toss while in motion. Bingo! I nailed it. I no longer stopped the bike anymore and made much better time this week on delivery, getting everyone’s paper to them early.
On the last block, a man next to a customer of mine was watering his roses in the front yard. “Sonny, what ya got there?” “Sir, it’s a weekly paper. It’s got great stories and coupons for local businesses” I returned cheerfully. “Well I’m going to sign up then” My first NEW customer! I was ecstatic. Within three weeks and more new customers, I was getting checks over $5. By two months in, I was sitting on a small fortune for a boy my age. I decided it was time to invest in some back-page comic book entertainment. I climbed up onto our living room sofa with a stack of comic books. Time to make some purchases. But what? Then I saw it…
“Imagine navigating around through treacherous waters in your very own two man Polaris Nuclear submarine!”
“NO WAY!” This is it. I have to have this. How cool would this be. I could already see a friend of mine marveling over the fact I, the captain, owned and operated a submarine. It was settled. I found an envelope and some paper, wrote up a short paragraph explaining that I would like to purchase one of these submarines with the help of my mother’s check. I paid her in full of course, like a respectable captain would obviously do. I put the mailing address on the envelope along with a stamp and personally rode my bike to the nearest public mailbox, and down the slot it went. I opened the slot a second time to confirm nothing had gone awry at the last moment.
The ad said to allow for up to four weeks for delivery and it nearly killed me. I started checking in on the mailman’s schedule about two weeks in. Finally the day arrived. There was a knock on the door and the mailman handed my mother a box. “Michael, I think your package has arrived” I stood there looking at the box. I expected something much larger. How will a submarine fit in this box? I took it with a rushed “thank you” and out to the backyard I went. I eyed the package with focused suspicion. Then I opened it. Inside was a folded box. I took it out and laid it on the lawn. There was a piece of paper that appeared to be the assembly instructions. I followed them meticulously. With the last tab inserted into the last slot, I stood back. I was starring at a cardboard box.
I rushed into the house and retrieve the comic book and brought it back to the yard. I stood there with the last-page submarine ad in one hand comparing to the box that sat before me on the lawn, back to the ad, back to the box. What am I to make of this? Then it was so obvious that I felt ashamed and stupid. Right there in plain daylight in the ad was the first word…
Imagine
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