Backstory: Return of the paperboy

The demise of paperboys across the country can be traced in part to the demise of afternoon newspapers. Few kids are willing to get up early enough to deliver morning papers, and there aren't as many afternoon dailies to sling after school. Some states even prohibit youngsters from working early: In Massachusetts, for example, no child under 18 can work before 6 a.m. Many newspapers, too, have centralized their distribution.

As a result, the paper route - once walked by such notables as Harry Truman, John Wayne, and billionaire Warren Buffet - is now being taken over by adults. As recently as 1994, according to the Newspaper Association of America, some 57 percent of paper carriers were under 18. Today it's fewer than 19 percent.

As an afternoon paper, the Sun is a convenient outlet for kids looking for jobs - and the paper enthusiastically endorses using them. Though it still employs about 125 adult carriers, the paper has been shifting more deliveries to neighborhood kids in recent months.

"We never did abandon the kids," says Circulation Director Michael Sheehan. "It connects the paper to the community, and it's far better to have a connection to the neighborhoods. The majority of the kids do a fantastic job, because their parents are behind them. It becomes a family event."

There's no shortage of kids wanting to deliver the Sun. Whenever the paper posts an ad for carriers, it often gets five responses for every slot. Of course, it doesn't hurt that the paper often offers incentives, as they do now, that reward the carrier who signs up the most new customers with an Xbox. The carriers, too, are as diverse as the city: African-American, white, Puerto Rican, Portuguese, Cambodian, Laotian, and Vietnamese.

Chris Kirby, who hauls the most Suns of any carrier (120), is making a tidy sum - about $200 a week. "I have a lot of money in my bank account," he says proudly. He has saved $2,000 in just the past four months, which has put him well on his way to his ultimate goal - buying a used Subaru.

I was a paperboy, too, for about four years in the late 1960s and early '70s. I guess you could say it was my first job in this biz. It was in Orono, Maine, and in the winter it was cold, snowy, and icy. I often wondered what I was doing out there, up before 6 a.m., schlepping 50 or so papers a mile-plus.

Well, like the kids who do it now, I was learning responsibility, how to run a business, and stay in shape. I learned that money was not just something doled out by parents just for breathing, but something to be earned. And when you earn it, you become more aware of why you spend it, and what you spend it on.

Hey, it might still be spent on pinball and soda pop, but at least they were my earned quarters.

As mine was a morning route, it woke me up and got me going before school started. And because the delivery part of the job could be done on automatic pilot, I got to plot and daydream, create little fictions.

More important, I really did get to know my own mostly middle-class neighborhood - the people on the two-plus streets I covered. (Some of them weren't as middle-class, so I learned about the concept of "floating'' a payment.) I didn't see many humans - just lots of dogs and cats - in the morning, but I got to know the people when I collected. I could probably name at least half of them, even today.

I'd get snacks, conversation, and time to play with their pets. At one house, the Mooses, I was given a small Maine Coon kitten, which I named Clyde, after Clyde Barrow. ("Bonnie and Clyde" was hot and I loved Warren Beatty's portrayal of the gangster.) Clyde was my best friend for nine years. He used to follow me on my route some days. Occasionally, he would precede me to the house I was delivering to, and when he came across a house that didn't take the paper, he'd skip it. I swear that's true.

Now and again, I dream about that route. Invariably, I'll have forgotten a house or not collected from somebody for months. But I'll wake up - put my alarm at bay - and go out to grab the paper from wherever the delivery guy has tossed it.

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