As a
kid, I had a paper route. I grew up in Northwest Denver during
the 1980s and and in the spring of '82 I delivered the Denver
Post. Back then Denver was a 2 newspaper town and the Post was
the afternoon paper. My 2 older sisters and older brother all
had routes as well but they delivered the morning paper, the
Rocky Mountain News. I had my afternoon route for only a couple
of months until a morning News route became available in my
neighborhood. My siblings and I had 4 routes that covered our
entire neighborhood. On Sundays, due to all the ad and comic
inserts, the papers became too heavy to deliver by bike and my
mom would help us out and drive the routes in the family's 1974
powder Blue 4 door Plymouth Valiant. The nice thing was that
only two of us kids were needed to deliver from the car and we
rotated who could sleep in. After the delivering was done, Mom
would drive us over to the Winchell's Donuts where we would buy
a couple dozen donuts and head home.
"I delivered the News in the Blizzard of '82". That's what the shirt said that the paper gave to all us paper carriers after the late December Blizzard in Denver. The only other item I remember getting from the paper was an AM transistor radio. The first radio that I owned. It had a sticker wrapped around its' plastic case that made it look like a newspaper box. Of course I was curious as to what was inside my little radio so I peeled my label off so I could crack open the case and try to figure out what made it work.