paperboys

why?  because this is where my mind is right now.


"a paper route?", i asked incredulously.  "are you seriously telling me that you, a grown man of your accomplishments, are throwing papers?"

it was 1977 and ginger and i had driven down to austin for what we thought was gonna be a relaxing weekend with beau and her sister, gayla.  little did we know.

"yeah," he said.  "and, this weekend, so are you."

since the glory days of the fox's lair, beau had been through many ups and downs, but mostly downs.  here was the thing about him, though--whether he was scaling the heights or plumbing the depths, i never saw him lose his air of self-assurance; he was master of whatever situation in which he found himself, and he always landed on his feet.  but this time, i had my doubts.

"but you can't make money throwing papers," i protested.  "nobody makes money throwing papers--hell, i sure never did."

"that's because you were doing it wrong."

"oh yeah?  then enlighten me."  so he did.

turns out when beau returned from vietnam in the late 60's, broke and at loose ends, he found himself in florida.  he worked in construction for awhile, until, tired of breaking his back for little money, he started looking around for a better way.  it came when, after calling the miami herald for the umpteenth time to complain about his missing paper, the circulation manager apologized for the lousy service, told him finding reliable carriers for his crime-ridden area was a huge problem.  that's when the light went on.

beau talked the guy into giving him not one, not two, but ten routes--morning and afternoon--promised him he could solve all his problems.  he then went out and bought an old step-van, recruited a dozen 8-year-old urchins off the streets, offered each the princely sum of a dollar a day and all the candy they could eat.

each morning at three, he'd pile the kids into the back of the van, pick up the papers and drive while they rolled.  he'd drop 'em off one by one at their assigned corners with all their papers--their little shoulder-bags so full they could barely walk--go have breakfast, come back, pick 'em up, take 'em home, sleep til noon, and repeat the process at three that afternoon.  as more routes became available, the operation grew, and beau became not only the newspaper king, but the undisputed pied-piper/fagin of the hood.

"so lemme get this straight--they did all the work, and you paid 'em a dollar?"

"hey, those kids learned life lessons money can't buy."

"uh huh.  and you actually made a living doing this?"

he smiled that smile.  "where do you think the money for the fox's lair came from?"

*     *     *     *     *

unfortunately for beau, times had changed, and austin wasn't third-world miami--he'd have to do it without the child labor this time.  he figured it out, though.

he had long ago realized that the most time-consuming part of a paper route was not the throwing, but the rolling.  carriers would gather at the station, collect their papers and then spend an hour or two rolling and banding them, loading them into shopping carts, shlepping 'em out to their cars and filling 'em up.

fuck that--he figured if he just tossed the bundles into the car and rolled the papers while he drove and threw, he could do two routes instead of one in the same amount of time.

"your hands are pretty busy, so you drive with your knees," he explained.

he had managed to pick up two large, adjoining semi-rural routes in far-east austin--morning and afternoon--and breezed through each run in a little over two hours during the week, leaving the rest of his day free.  it was the weekends that were the problem, when all four routes overlapped and had to be thrown between the hours of 3:00 and 6:00 a.m.  it was a huge undertaking, and gayla got pressed into service on the weekends--and that particular weekend, so did ginger and i.

we stayed up that friday night, eating, drinking and playing board games, and headed out around 2:30 in two cars.  beau had hitched a little trailer to his car, which i didn't really understand until i saw the mountain of paper that awaited us.

"c'mon, this is everybody, right?  this can't all be yours."

he laughed.  "this is nothing--wait'll you see sunday."

*     *     *     *

by the time i moved down to austin the following year to begin my first half-hearted attempt at a UT education (back in the days when you could still work your way through college), beau had talked me into joining him in his enterprise.  since a morning route was outta the question for my sleep-til-noon ass, i opted for an afternoon route instead.  but first, i'd need training in the beau method--and i'd get a crash course.

i shadowed him on his route a few times, sitting in the backseat.  he never used rubber bands to roll, opting instead for the more-expensive bags usually reserved for rainy days, because he could hook a sleeve of 100 under his belt, hang it between his legs, fold the papers once and slip 'em into the bags as he drove.  thursdays, saturdays and sundays were a little more tricky, because on those days the papers came in two parts; rather than opening the main section of each paper and inserting the supplement like he was supposed to, he'd just slap 'em together, fold once and into the bag they'd go.  when the front seat was empty and the floorboards full, he'd reach into the back and pull another couple bundles forward and start all over--all this, understand, while driving at speed, turning corners, handling a clutch and five-speed (and usually a cigarette and cup of coffee), and keeping a running conversation going with me--oh, and throwing papers out the window when appropriate.  it was really kind of amazing to watch.

the route itself was byzantine--miles of unmarked dirt roads, ramshackle houses and trailers with no numbers, and, remembering how much trouble i had had memorizing the orderly suburban route i had had taken on in high school, i couldn't imagine how he had learned it with such seeming ease.

"lemme guess,"  he said.  "you had a route list on paper, and for the first three weeks you'd stop at every street, scan the sheet for addresses and drive at 5 miles an hour looking for numbers.  took you forever, right?"

"well, yeah, that's how you do it."

"well, yeah, if you're an idiot.  i got news for you--three days from now, i'm taking the day off.  you're gonna do my route, you're gonna do it by yourself and you're gonna do it perfectly, in about the same time it takes me."

and, you know what?  he was right.

the next day, he taped the whole route as we drove--"turn left, look left, start counting mailboxes, and throw your fourth one--it's yellow--and then look right, pass the big tree with the rusty buick under it and hit the second driveway", and on and on it went.

the following day, he put me in the driver's seat and watched from the back as the tape played and i fumbled with bags and papers, bumping over curbs and veering into opposing traffic as i turned corners with my knees while wildly throwing papers left and right--and it didn't help that he was laughing his ass off the entire time.  but, by god, i did it.

within a month, i was a veteran of the beau method of paper-throwing--handling my own route, throwing papers across three lanes of traffic with one hand with an accuracy nolan ryan would envy while rolling with the other, and making more money in two hours a day than most of my minimum-wage fellow students would earn in eight.

the best days were when we'd do our routes together--his rural route at one, my urban route at three. the papers were secondary by then--hell, that was automatic.  it was the hours we spent together surrounded by those piles of newsprint that i remember about that time.  it seemed like nothing then, but i'd give a lot for just one of those lost afternoons right about now.