Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson for March 22, 2024

Haven’t seen a paperboy in decades.

When I was 13 a friend took her brothers route and I helped. The rule was throw it as close to the door as you can. That was 49 years ago…time flies.

Not my rules. I carried a route for four years. Every paper went on the porch.

My local paper recently made the choice to start sending the daily paper through the postal service. I seem to always get three at a time and always the day after the latest one published.

I had a Sunday paper route back when Sunday papers were 1 1/2 to 2 inches thick. When the truck dropped the papers they needed to be assembled before I could deliver them. Even with a handlebar basket and saddle baskets it took several trips to deliver them all. And unlike a daily paper that you could fold, tuck and toss each paper had to be placed by hand at the door. In the winter it took longer because with the snow and ice it wasn’t safe to use my bike so I stacked and tied them to my Flexible Flyer and mush through the snow like a sled dog. The worse part of the job was that I had to collect and pay the distributor their cut even if the customer wasn’t around to pay. The best part was that I didn’t have to go to church.

Back in the ’60s we had to make the collections too. Not fun, unless you got a tip.

Panel #3 is that the street? If so, it’s an odd angle.

I can’t remember when we last had a paper boy, or girl. For 30 years the paper was delivered by and adult in a car, who couldn’t throw to save his life, and the bill was sent directly to us by the newspaper. 10 years ago, we got tired of the paper on the roof, on the car, or nowhere to be found at all. Been digital ever since.

Digital is better, don’t have to go out in the rain and snow to get it. Always comes on time.

I find that the bigger the tip, the closer to the front door the paper lands.

I miss the paper

Had best deliverer for years. Placed paper on steps.

Then new rule, car drives by throws on end of driveway, usually ended in street or on the lawn/ in snow pile, barely seeable, where we didn’t want it.

Had to call many times and they were surprised when we finally told them we don’t want it anymore because of crappy services after having to call soooo many times.

Once Gannett bought our paper, first they consolidated ALL delivery (city of 200,000) to one carrier who was expected to subcontract it or do it all himself, and then ended delivery entirely. Now it gets delivered by the USPS. I finally gave up on the paper a few months before the end of delivery.

I had a friend I couldn’t play with after school, because he had a paper route. He wasn’t earning much, it didn’t seem worth it to me. We turned 16 and he bought a red 1965 (or 66) Chevy Impala. I got a workers permit and started building houses. I wonder if Verne still has that car…

Not many people use the newpaper anymore, and it’s a good thing for our trees but a bad thing for the kids who had jobs as paper boy deliverers. I grew up mowing lawns, shoveling snow and walking a mile uphill to school and uphill back home :) first part is true, going uphill back home was a Fabrication. Have a great day people!

Here in Kerala, India, it’s still a job for a grown individual. They deliver the paper to the door or if it’s too far from the gate (like mine), to the mailbox. I gave up reading physical newspapers in 2013, when I quit my job in a newspaper company. Till then I used to get 4 papers in 3 languages delivered. Nowadays, we subscribe to one regional newspaper for my mom, who’s 76, so that she can keep up with the obituaries!

I guess he could toss his Laptop out there and bring it inside to read

A local company used to deliver a free paper once a week right to my front steps. It was just ads and classifieds, but I miss it: I am almost out of paper to put down when I paint or work on small engines…

One still drives around. Amazing how far they have to drive between deliveries now

And on rainy days, we had to put the paper in a plastic bag. I hated getting calls that the paper was soaked and I had to take them another one.

I also miss newspapers in general. Now, they’re hardly even a mere shell of their former selves. Classifieds, comics and who knows what else are either farmed out to the internet or just eliminated. TV schedules are a thing of the past.

I wonder what young people today will miss when they get to be my current age.

That’s true. Arlo doesn’t have any other friends outside of his wife and the old dude. No wonder he’s lonely.

Our last paper “boy” was 80 years old. He drove the route with his wife in the back seat (the papers were on the front passenger seat). I was sad when we moved away temporarily and had to cancel the paper. We never saw Gene again.

I haven’t seen a paper delivery person in years!

The internet killed newspapers. Then Apple tried to take over the New York Times, The Washington Post, and the L.A. Times. All three told Apple to “pound sand”. Small town newspapers still have a use. National news does not cover your local area, and television news is all negativity.

Before I canceled my subscription, the paper boy usually missed me.

Now a newspaper is about 2 pages, and the “news” is old. I remember paper boys delivering news papers in all type of weather, and a lot of times being stiffed by the buyers.

I get all the news online. My local paper even has a site where you can turn the pages just as if you were reading the actual paper. It never has to be fished out of a mud puddle or off the roof, but I haven’t figured out how to use it for mulch, and about 10 pages of newspaper under just enough mulch to hide it will keep weeds down for a couple of years, dissolve into plant food, and never require digging out when it needs to be redone.

Most paper boys are a thing of the past!

I miss the honest newspapers.

And apparently the paperboy misses you!

I miss having time to read the daily paper. Back when there weren’t dozens of other distractions in my email, on my phone or on TV, which I now have to pay (a lot) for…

I have a concrete pipe that is under the end of the driveway, and he gets extra tips when it goes inside there as he throws from the drivers side window. It often happens when rain water is in there, but he wraps them up great. However, sometimes when the grass grows faster than the mowers get here it looks like snakes would get me, but nope it’s just my outdoor cat trying wanting to play. It’s the little things that make life so much fun.

Still get a paper in Florida during the winter, but at $42/month I don’t know how much longer they will survive.

I, too, miss the paperboy – an actual kid with a shoulderbag or bicycle saddlebags. Around here they used (until they started mailing the “morning” paper last year – and i finally cancelled) rumpots with jalopies; far worse service!

I drove a paper route for a couple of years. Afternoon paper and a Sunday morning paper. Delivered those starting about 1am on a 100 mile route out in the county. So one Saturday night there was a horrible ice storm. Corporate told us, no mailboxes or paper tubes. Too dangerous because of risk of sliding off into a ditch. I double bagged all the papers and, where I could, I put them in mailboxes and paper tubes. Took 13 hours to finish the route. When I got home, my manager called me and said someone had reported to corporate that they didn’t get a paper. I got back in my car, ice storm and all, and drove to their house, knowing full well I had delivered it. They had a HUGE ditch so I had put it in their driveway. When I knocked on their door with their replacement paper, they were all in the living room with their paper spread out, kids reading the comics, husband reading sports and lady had the lifestyle section in her hand. She had lied to corporate because her paper wasn’t in her mailbox. There were harsh penalties imposed by me for this injustice. I won’t go into detail. Life of a paper boy is interesting. You haven’t known surprise unless you have opened a mail box at 3am that someone has locked a cat in the day before or stepped out of the car while leaving a subdivision to take a whizz only to encounter the 6ft rattlesnake you apparently ticked off on your way in.

I love reading an actual daily newspaper. In MI I had 3. Det Free Press, Det News, and TC Record Eagle[1980-2003]In San Antonio I had 2 San Antonio Express News and WSJ[2003-2017] and when we moved near Tulsa[2017-present] I got the printed copy of the Tulsa World until 2023 when carriers kept quitting and found papers all over, from the street, to my driveway to the flower bed and only rarely where I told them to put it-on the covered porch where it would not get soaking wet-until I finally said enough and went with the eEdition. Which I am tempted to drop as the paper, which 5 years ago would take me about 90 minutes to read now takes less than a half hour. With less actual city and state news and more half and full page articles that read more like opinion than factual news articles that let me make up my own mind. Plus the cut the comics to a half page. BUT, if you get the eEdition you get lots of extra pages including a full page of color comics

Newsboys & paperboys are as dead as hand crank cars

I collected $0.42 per week. $0.07 per paper. I got paid $0.02 per paper. Some people gave me an 8 cent tip. Two places were taverns where I usually got a tip and a glass of orange soda.

We still get the flyers in a bag, but delivery was so hit and miss and he dropped it on the driveway even when it was snowing. my neighbours snow blower ate one and it took us an hour to dismantle it to get the paper out. I stopped my delivery permanently. Do flyers online now. easier and no worries about the snowblower.

I miss the paper delivery too – only digital for me now—it just isn’t the same :(

I took it to mean that due to the integrity level of today’s Publishers and Editors most people have canceled their print media and are depending on email delivery of news publishers.

I was a paperboy (as we were called) from 1957 to 1963 when I left for college. I was very conscientious about where the papers were placed. One early morning I flipped the paper towards the porch and a wind gust lifted it to the roof. I spent 10 minutes looking for a rake or something to retrieve with no luck. When I came on Saturday morning to collect for the week, the customer asked why he got no paper on Wednesday. I said he got it, but it was still on the roof. He deducted 7 cents from my normal payment of 60 cents. My profit was 2 cents a paper so that was quite a financial blow for me back in the day. BTW my profit per week was $7. My kids have never understood why I got up at 5AM toearn $7. I keep telling them that’s about the equivalent of $70 per week now. A tidy sum for a young boy.

I’m with a lot of people here. In the good ‘ol days of life, we used to deliver to the door or in a box of some kind or wherever they told us they wanted the newspaper. We had to do what we were instructed to do. Today all I see is somebody throwing the paper out of their car and not even caring about where the newspaper lands, even in apartment complexes. I have newspaper boxes (They look like mail boxes) set up that came from the newspaper company itself and the delivery people look at me like I was some alien because I wanted my newspaper in the box and not on the ground especially when it rains or snow. That meant they had to get out of their car, put the newspapers in the newspaper box and then get back in. That isn’t too hard is it?

Is the point of the strip that the adult delivering his paper doesn’t do as good a job as the paperboy used to? I rode a 5-mile country route for four years in the mid-fifties. Papers mostly went onto the driveway. Paid $20 a month.

We stopped taking out local paper years ago, after having been faithful readers for many, many years. Our paper became so acidic and partisan it no longer was a pleasure to read. I never wanted it to go toward my opinions. But I did miss getting just the facts and nothing more. I don’t care what they claim, political spin is what killed off the newspapers. Once we stopped taking the paper they kept begging us to sign up again and asking us why we had left. But when we tried to explain why they accused us of being right wing nuts. (We aren’t.) We simply wanted to read news that was only factual and not full of the writer’s opinions. I miss reading the paper as it was when I was a kid.

Our paperboy delivered our papers (he had morning and afternoon routes) inside our front storm door. I loved not having to get out in the winter snow to get the paper.

I miss the paper boy, but not for the same reason. He used to bring it in the morning, but now we have to wait until 2:00 or later to get it in the mail.

Lucky you, my town doesn’t even get the major local paper anymore.

It was a great job back in the 60’s. I saved enough to buy my first ($200) car. I once figured the hourly rate was about four bucks. That amounted to seven hours to deliver the papers and two hours to collect the money owed for my part; which was delivery. The days of $200 cars are long over and at that time most “teen” jobs paid a buck to a buck and a quarter per hour. Those jobs were fast food, mowing lawns, gas pump jockey and most any job a teen ager would be glad to do.

I think he’s missing not finding his newspaper.

I miss the paper. I was a paper girl, I always put them on the porch.

Read BCN this week.