My first job.
I started the paper route 3:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning. Well it was kind of scary for me, pretty dark out, and I had never done anything like that before. The route had 100 customers during the week, and on Sunday it had 120. It was more like 240 when got through stuffing the papers with the inserts. It took me a long time to do the route almost 4 hours. Got home in time to get ready for church. I was real tired. Almost going to sleep in church, my father wasn’t going to let that happen.
When we got home and sat down for breakfast my father told me that I had a lot of responsibility delivering the morning paper. He said that I had to move fast to get the customer the paper before they went to work. He said that he likes his paper there by 4:00 a.m. because he leaves for work at 5:00 a.m. and if he was to wait until he got home to read it then it was old news and he might as well get the evening paper. I was sure hoping that not everyone had to have the paper by 4:00 a.m. he told me to just move along and I would get faster and he was right.
Every week in the evenings I had to collect for the papers I had delivered. I learned what it was like to be dodged by the customer. Sometimes they would ask me to come back the next day and sometimes “the light was on but no one was home”. My father told me that if I wanted to get paid then the customer had to pay for the product delivered. Be nice, get the money or stop the delivery.
I noticed that when I was delivering and collecting that there were a lot people that I did not have as customers. So I figured that the more customers the more money. I started knocking on doors and that first year on the route I doubled the size. I got tips at Christmas that were over $100.00. For a 13 year old that was a lot. Then one day my father told me that I should order a couple extra bundles of Sunday papers. He said that I could take them down at the main intersection close to where I lived and sell them to passers by. And sell them I did. Because people were in there cars and couldn’t sit long they would just pay me real quick not waiting for change. Tips!
Man I sure did love earning the money. I was like becoming a little rich kid. I started spending it on all sorts of stuff. Dr. Pepper and a Three Musketeers candy bar were my favorites. And I didn’t mind spending some on my friends. Heck I could even buy Playboy magazines. I really had a lot of friends then. You see this lesson was one that I was going to have a tough time with most of my life. I was raised in a family of hard workers with little knowledge of how to handle money. I’m not saying that my folks didn’t try to teach me to save. I think they wanted me to have things too. As long as they did not have to spend for me and as long as I wasn’t getting to trouble then everything was okay. But you know economics wasn’t something taught to our class of people.
