December 21, 2016 at 6:08 p.m.
Playing Santa is a joy of the season
Back in the Saddle
I was richer than I’d ever been in my life.
It was Christmas. And I was a paperboy.
These days, we’d say newspaper carrier, because a good number of them are girls and others are adults.
But I was a paperboy.
I was probably 14 or 15 years old, and I had a good, solid route that I walked on Race Street from Pleasant Street to Park Street and a little beyond, then came back on North Street from Park to Pleasant and home.
It was larger and longer and more challenging than most of the routes today, but newspaper delivery — along with virtually everything else — has changed in the 50-plus years that have gone so swiftly by.
And there was no better time to be a paperboy than at Christmas.
That’s when the tips appeared.
Even the most curmudgeonly customer, the kind who complained that 40 cents a week seemed exorbitant, might see it in a moment of generosity to give the carrier an extra buck.
Other customers tipped with candy or cookies.
And others — the paperboy knew — couldn’t afford a tip at all.
Those were the houses that didn’t respond to a knock on the door on Saturday morning when you came to collect. The TV might be blaring. The voices inside would be easily discernible. But the paperboy at the door might as well have been invisible.
None of the tips were large in those days.
Most were a dollar. I don’t remember ever seeing a $5 bill as a tip. Some were just spare change.
But it added up.
And when Mom and Dad are providing a roof over your head and three hot meals a day and everything else that comes with a happy home, that makes you the richest kid in the world.
So that one Christmas, feeling flush, I decided to play Santa Claus.
We were, at our house, still hanging stockings in front of the cold hearth under the mantle in the living room. In fact, I think we had kidded our parents into having stockings of their own for the first time.
It provided a sweet opportunity.
When I hauled my money up to Peoples Bank to pay my paper bill — taking part in a system that disappeared about 40 years ago — and when I had counted my profit for the week’s collections, I did something special for the holiday.
I traded some of the quarters and tip money in for silver dollars, enough to put one each in the stockings of my siblings and my parents.
It was the first time in my life that I got to play Santa.
And I don’t think I’ve ever felt richer in my life.
A silver dollar in the stocking for Mom and Dad? What could be better than that?
It was Christmas. And I was a paperboy.
These days, we’d say newspaper carrier, because a good number of them are girls and others are adults.
But I was a paperboy.
I was probably 14 or 15 years old, and I had a good, solid route that I walked on Race Street from Pleasant Street to Park Street and a little beyond, then came back on North Street from Park to Pleasant and home.
It was larger and longer and more challenging than most of the routes today, but newspaper delivery — along with virtually everything else — has changed in the 50-plus years that have gone so swiftly by.
And there was no better time to be a paperboy than at Christmas.
That’s when the tips appeared.
Even the most curmudgeonly customer, the kind who complained that 40 cents a week seemed exorbitant, might see it in a moment of generosity to give the carrier an extra buck.
Other customers tipped with candy or cookies.
And others — the paperboy knew — couldn’t afford a tip at all.
Those were the houses that didn’t respond to a knock on the door on Saturday morning when you came to collect. The TV might be blaring. The voices inside would be easily discernible. But the paperboy at the door might as well have been invisible.
None of the tips were large in those days.
Most were a dollar. I don’t remember ever seeing a $5 bill as a tip. Some were just spare change.
But it added up.
And when Mom and Dad are providing a roof over your head and three hot meals a day and everything else that comes with a happy home, that makes you the richest kid in the world.
So that one Christmas, feeling flush, I decided to play Santa Claus.
We were, at our house, still hanging stockings in front of the cold hearth under the mantle in the living room. In fact, I think we had kidded our parents into having stockings of their own for the first time.
It provided a sweet opportunity.
When I hauled my money up to Peoples Bank to pay my paper bill — taking part in a system that disappeared about 40 years ago — and when I had counted my profit for the week’s collections, I did something special for the holiday.
I traded some of the quarters and tip money in for silver dollars, enough to put one each in the stockings of my siblings and my parents.
It was the first time in my life that I got to play Santa.
And I don’t think I’ve ever felt richer in my life.
A silver dollar in the stocking for Mom and Dad? What could be better than that?
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