It Was Much More than Being a “Newsie”

Today in The Denver Post there was an article about the “Newsies” of the past. Newsies were newspaper delivery kids and I was one of them.

Growing up, my musical instrument of choice was the organ. You rarely see them anymore outside of traditional churches, classic rock bands or some ballparks. Back in the day, lots of homes would have one in the living room. There were also several brands such as Wurlitzer, Hammond, Baldwin and Lowry. If you went to a home show, each of those brands would have large displays with very well dressed salespeople hawking the qualities of their brand. Organs were popular and were featured on televised music shows. I can remember going to my grandparents house on Saturday night and watching Bob Ralston play the organ on the weekly Lawrence Welk music and dancing show.

My interest in music began to wane when I reached 8th grade. There were other things that demanded my time and attention: sports, hanging out at the park with buddies and of course girls. Recognizing my declining interest in taking my musical abilities further and not wanting to waste all the money he had spent on weekly organ lessons my Dad decided to try to pump a little energy back into my musical interests. He had heard a new band named The Doors and their break out hit, “Light My Fire.” The song featured the organ played by a guy named Ray Manzarek. My Dad liked it and actually suggested I should look into joining a rock band. There were two problems. First, I was only 13 years old. Second, to be an organist in a rock band one needed a portable organ complete with an amplifier. There weren’t a lot of portable organs on the market at the time – they were just becoming a “thing.” Thanks to groups like The Doors and Iron Butterfly, bands were starting to add the organ to the normal mix of guitars. For someone who played the organ, being able to execute the organ solos in “Light My Fire” and “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” (Iron Butterfly) was a requirement to join any “garage band” at the time. I learned both those solos by listening to them repeatedly and then trying to duplicate them on my console Baldwin organ, in my parents living room. That qualified me to audition for a place in a band but I still had the issue of not having a portable organ. Again, my Dad stepped to the rescue and suggested I should get a paper route to start earning the money to buy the Farfisa compact organ I had my eye on.

Being a “Newsie” was a commitment. There were two papers in Albuquerque at the time. The “Journal” was the morning paper and was always on the door step by 7:00 AM. The “Tribune” was the afternoon paper and arrived around 4:00 PM. There was a third option, The Sunday Denver Post. I have no idea why that paper had a large following in Albuquerque, New Mexico – maybe because Denver was the closest “big” city. The home delivery cost was something like 50 cents per week. Being a Denver Post carrier involved three primary job requirements. First, once per month, the distribution manager would pick you up, usually early in the evening, and drive you and a few other carriers to a neighborhood where he would drop you off after assigning you a few blocks of houses to go door to door in an attempt to sell more subscriptions. 8:00 PM was the normally accepted time when you had to stop knocking on peoples doors. If you went much later then that you could expect more scornful responses than normal. The manager would pick you up at an assigned place and take you home. The carrier who sold the most subscriptions that evening would get a little bonus – usually a couple of dollars. Can you imagine letting one of your kids do that kind of thing in today’s world? You would be in jail for child abuse.

The second job requirement was making the actual deliveries on Sunday morning. I had been “given” two routes totaling 75 papers. The routine was, the papers would be dropped by my parents front door around 4:30 in the morning, every Sunday. There would be two stacks – one was the newspaper itself and the other was the inserts complete with the “Funnies” section. I would have to stuff the inserts into the center of the paper and then restack them. The finished paper was too thick to roll so we would pile them in the back seat of my Dad’s Volkswagen beetle and be on the road by 5:30 AM. The Denver Post would not allow the carriers to throw the papers on the driveway, the way the Journal and Tribune were delivered. Instead we were required to run the paper up to the front door and drop it there. My Dad would drive slowly down the street with a list of the subscriber addresses, as I ran down the street. He would stop in front of the designated address, I would reach in, grab a paper out of the back seat, make the drop and race to the next house. Our goal was to be finished no later than 7:00 AM so we could get home, wash the newsprint off our hands, have some breakfast and make it to church for the 8:00 service.

The final piece of the job was “collections.” In 1967 there were no on-line payment options. No one used credit cards and you never prepaid for goods or services. The Denver Post billed me monthly for the number of papers I was responsible for and it was up to me to collect the monthly subscription fee from my customers. Again – my father was there to help. On a couple of nights each month we would again drive my route so I could knock on doors in an effort to collect what they owed me for their paper. Everything was cash so I carried a small bank bag with a couple of dollars and some coins so I could make change if necessary. We tried to do collections on the same night every month so people would expect me, just like you expect your public service bills around the same time each month. There were always a few homes where people were gone or maybe knew it was me and wouldn’t answer the door. We would make a second trip to those homes in hopes of making those collections and in most cases it worked out. Collections were really important because my “profit” was the difference between the cost of my papers and what I collected each month. That profit was going to buy me that Farfisa organ I saw at Ridley Music in downtown Albuquerque. I could then quit the paper route and start working on becoming the rock star I knew I was destined to be.

Looking back on it now, becoming a Newsie isn’t the real story. The real story is about the dedication of my father and the life lessons he taught me. First, he taught me responsibility by encouraging me to take on the paper route. I was accountable to my distribution manager and to my customers. Failure to take responsibility for all phases of the job would result in me losing the route and the dream of the Farfisa compact organ would go crashing down. Second, my Dad was teaching me about dealing with people. It wasn’t easy to be a 13 year old, knocking on strangers doors, trying to sell them something they didn’t know they needed and then going back to their door each month to ask them to pay for it. Of course there were some very kind people, some of which would actually tip me an extra 25 cents. There were ladies who would greet me at the door with a warm homemade cookie or on a cold evening invite me in for a cup of hot chocolate. There were also a lot or doors slammed in my face, scary dogs that started barking at my approach, and a few big kids out to bully “the paper boy.” The next thing my Father was teaching me was trust. He trusted me to work hard, take care of my customers and be responsible to my boss. Through his trust of me he also taught me how to deal with people of all sorts. Those people included the ones that slammed the door in my face and the ones that would not answer the door because they didn’t want to pay me the $2.00 they owed me. Fortunately I also learned to appreciate the customers who paid every month, without making it hard for me. They were the people who would answer the door with a smile on their face and thank me for my good service. He also taught me how to enjoy the personal satisfaction and rewards of working hard and doing the job right. I will always remember the feeling of accomplishment I had when I plunked down a wad of cash on the counter at the Ridley Music Store and walked out the door lugging that new Farfisa compact organ and my new amplifier.

The most important thing my Dad taught me though wasn’t about earning money or how to deal with people. The most important thing my Dad taught me was about being a Dad. He showed me his love for me by being a gentle but stern guide. He would have let me fail but showed so much confidence in me he knew I could never allow myself to let him down. I never felt like he was forcing me to do anything. He trusted me and strengthened and matured me through his trust. He was guiding me, he was teaching me, he was allowing me to learn by watching him and he was pointing me toward becoming a man. He was doing everything he could to set me up for success as an adult.

I had a lot of fun with that Farifisa organ, playing in various rock groups all the way through high school and into my first couple of years of college. The various bands I was in played at high school proms, community center dances, 3.2 beer halls, the NCO club at the Air Force base and an occasional bar. We also performed at small town grange halls, and at raves in farmers barns where we would sleep outside in tents after the gig. It wasn’t exactly the thing rock stars did. The closest I ever got to stardom was the jobs we would play with a Colorado band named “Sugar Loaf.” They were a one hit wonder with a song named “Green Eyed Lady” (it still gets some air time on classic rock stations.) They liked playing with us because we made them look really good!

Much to Terrie’s chagrin that Farfisa organ still sits in our basement – it hasn’t been played in almost 50 years but is an important reminder of my father and what he did for me. Is it time to ask yourself, will my children have a Farfisa in their basement 50 years from now? If we do our job as fathers right – the answer will be yes.