Job Number 1, Paper Boy. To be truthful, my very first legitimate (perhaps that is questionable) job was that of what is now called Newspaper Carrier. Oh, the Palm Beach Post referred to us as Carriers, but everyone else called us Paper Boys. Even the rare girl so employed was a Paper Boy, I believe. I do recall a girl who had a big route, and a particularly big rear, who made quite a success at the delivery business and even bought herself a new bike with front and rear baskets. I was not a success. When did I start this miserable endeavor? I would say I was 14, I think there was a lower limit on age. That would make the year 1963. Maybe I was 13, my memory is not good concerning the 60’s.We did not exactly work for the Post, but were “independent contractors” under the control of a District Manager. This was in my case, as in most cases, an evil Dickensian character, whose expertise in the exploitation of his band of amoral boys was exceeded only by our own skills at deception and trickery. Thankfully, the name of this vile loser has now exited my memory, but I know I remember him as Fagin.Young Fagin was a tow-headed braggart, and a man who rarely buttoned his shirt. He held court in his carport, slouched against some big fin muscle car. He would gather us for “management meetings” on an occasional Saturday, where he would exhort us to sell more subscriptions, thus adding to our income slightly and his greatly. There were prizes of all sorts including brand new Schwinn bicycles which we all coveted but which no one ever won. Fagin was skilled at lighting a fire under the butts of the boys and we went door to door, like orphaned beggars, pleading for subscriptions.You must know that customers paid in cash to the Paper Boy on a weekly basis, and then we paid the District Manager for the cost of the paper. Or rather the other way around, as we always had to pay in full and up front each week or forfeit a large cash deposit which invariably had been made by our parents. On the other hand, collecting from the Post reader was nearly impossible. Once again, this was a door-to-door pursuit, done on Friday evenings in anticipation of our debt to be paid Saturday morning, no later. I would knock and sing out: “Paper Boy! Come to Collect! Paper Boy!” Generally, this was enough to make the inhabitants hide in the bathroom. If I recall, the cost of the subscription for a week was about one dollar or perhaps one dollar twenty five. The boys’ profit for a full weekly subscription was a quarter per week, if Sunday was delivered, and only ten cents per week for a five-day delivery. God only knows what the Fagin demon made, but assuredly he did well as he was always paid while the boys were never paid in full.I recall that the several Jewish households on the Lakeside always paid with methodical regularity, while the good Christian rednecks were generally spent up on beer and were reeking drunk by Friday evening. One boozy fraud, a lowlife woman of questionable profession, was never home in the evening or on Saturday morning. She was so much in arrears to me, that I vowed to keep delivering as it was the only hope I had to force her to pay. If her paper were stopped she would never have any incentive to pay. It was Catch-22 before Heller wrote it. One morning before dawn, on my delivery rounds, I smacked her paper hard against her door. The doorbell brought no answer, but I knew from the car in the driveway the creature was within, sleeping off a night of wickedness. Creeping around in the dark to her bedroom, I noted the window was open to the coolness of the Florida morning. I banged the window and yelled: “Paper Boy! Come to collect! You owe me for five weeks!” From the darkness of the pit inside came a groan of pure suffering. She roared back: “Nobody’s home…and I am asleep!” So much for my pay. I stopped her delivery, gave up and took another loss.The idea that anyone would have so little character as to cheat a child out of $1.25 is beyond my belief even to this day. The substance of all forms of abuse, because they could I suppose. And what we went through on our appointed rounds! The procedure was this: up at 5 AM, and ride the bicycle on the old hand me down machine, if the tires were not flat, to the drop-off site. Once I awoke to the shock and sadness of having my bike’s wheels stolen, no doubt by another paper boy with flat tires. The drop site was an unproductive gas station where the heavy wire-bound bundles of papers were dumped in several piles for each of three or four boys. We cut the bundles with wire cutters purchased at a crooked price from the DM, and individually folded each paper and bound it with a rubber band, purchased in bulk. If it was rainy, we “bagged” each paper in a waxed wrap, purchased from the slimy District Manager. There would be a series of messages with the bundles. “Starts” would add a subscriber to the list of deadbeats and a new paper to pay for. “Stops” were those who quit subscribing after failing to pay for weeks, a loss borne solely by the Paper Boy. To issue a “stop” by the Paper Boy brought an argument from the Evil One. If District Manager did agree to stop the paper, invariably he would keep sending one in the bundle for several days or weeks to exact a revenge out of our profits.Then the procedure, after an hour or so of wrapping papers with the other boys and telling prurient stories, was to stuff the rolled papers into wire baskets fore and aft of the bike. The boys took great pride in their ability to ride fast, reach into the basket and whip out a paper, and sling it hard and fast. A paper on the roof or in the bushes was ignored. Always, I missed several households and wound up with useless papers added to the many extra sent in my bundle by the deceit and crooked counting of the vile Fagin. Of course, the reader would call the Post and I would be charged a penalty for the delivery by the District Manager, in addition to paying for the paper.And this so-called manager was a convincing liar. He liked to brag about how he cheated his insurance company by stealing his own hot rod transmission and hiding it in a closet! After I had the whimpiness to whine to my own dear Mother that I was losing money and now in danger of losing part of her deposit, she asked to “go over the books” with the Fagin Devil himself. He convinced her that I “should be making over $7.75 per week, if only I would collect from the subscribers. It is a matter of hard work,” he proclaimed. In the goodness of her blessed heart, she allowed me to quit in arrears, and lost some of the deposit. So ended my days as a “Carrier” for the Palm Beach Post.
Two Strikes 