The Newspaper Boy
In the almost fifty years I've lived in Alaska, I've never had a newspaper delivered to my doorstep. If I want to read the newspaper, which increasingly I don't, I have to go to a store to purchase one. It wasn't always that way though. When I was eleven or twelve, I joined the ranks of the young lads who were willing to abuse their bodies in exchange for a few dollars a week, delivering the news to people who cared; or at least wanted to see what was going on in the world at the time. It was brutal work, regardless of how it might have been portrayed in shows like Leave it to Beaver. Six days a week a lady named Dolly Tibbles came by my house and dropped off a bundle of newspapers. They were tied together with a thin, hemp rope, which at times cut into the edges of the papers. That always made the customers happy, and you can imagine who they complained to. I would have to retrieve a knife from the kitchen and cut the rope, then proceed to fold the papers in such a ...