During my third year, my friend Eric Neuner won Carrier of the Year. The Missourian published a picture of Eric receiving his award from James Kirkpatrick, the Missouri secretary of state. Eric was a year older than me, a good athlete and a voracious reader. He was the only other carrier I knew who read almost everything in the newspapers he delivered. That had become part of my morning routine: halfway through folding papers, I took a break to read the sports section, and then, after I got home, I tried to finish the newspaper at breakfast. I skimmed most political and international news, but I read everything about local accidents, arrests, and scandals. I loved the syndicated “Dear Abby” column, especially the headlines:
The first step toward becoming Carrier of the Year was to win Carrier of the Month. Candidates were disqualified if they received more than four customer complaints, and they had to participate in subscription drives. In the afternoons, I went door to door, trying to persuade people to take the Missourian. I learned that, despite my shyness, I was good at selling. I liked the nervousness I felt after pushing a strange doorbell, knowing that I would have to perform my sales pitch.
It took me a little more than a year to win Carrier of the Month. The announcement appeared on March 8, 1980, on page 3, along with the international headlines:
The article included a photograph, along with my grade and home address. In those days, publishing such details wasn’t considered risky for a child; the paper did the same thing for its Safe Bike Rider of the Week feature. The article about my award noted that I stood just four feet three inches tall, and it quoted a subscriber. “He’s so tiny that some mornings his papers drag,” she said. “He’s a swell little fellow.” I received a free haircut from Fantastic Sam’s, a banana split from Baskin-Robbins, and five dollars.
Size was my worst handicap as a carrier. I was so small that I had been held back in school, but even with a year’s advantage I remained among the shortest in my grade. I was naturally coördinated, and I believed that I was one of the fastest folders in the history of paperboys. Each step of the process—grab the paper, fold it twice, wrap the rubber band—was so quick and fluid that I imagined my hands as a Road Runner blur. Carriers often became obsessed with speed and efficiency. Eric, who was much bigger than me, rigged a bike with saddlebags to balance his load. My friend Brian Fick bought a Casio digital watch and timed how long it took him to bicycle his route every morning. Brian decided to skip the rubber bands, using instead the plastic bags that the Missourian gave us for rainy days, because he believed that they slid more quickly out of the canvas sack.
My route was hilly, and I carried more than forty papers. Nowadays, it’s easy to forget how large newspapers used to be. A page from the Missourian was two inches wider and nearly three inches longer than a page from today’s New York Times, and the typical Sunday Missourian, with sixty or more pages, weighed about a pound. I couldn’t handle such weight on a bike, so I walked, cutting through yards and finding gaps in fences and hedges. If I passed through the neighborhood later in the day as a civilian, I recognized thin ribbons of worn yellow grass crossing the green lawns. I was the only person who knew what those ribbons represented—the secret ways I walked every morning.
Most of the year, apart from summer, I delivered in darkness. Lights went on in certain houses at certain times, and I could tell if I was running late by the patterns of illuminated windows. In one Carrier of the Month feature, the Missourian quoted the winner (Mike Wagner, twelve years old, 2 Lucerne Court). “I get to see things other people don’t see,” Wagner said, without elaborating. I felt the same way, although I also had a horror-fascination with the idea that someday I would come across a dead body. In addition to winning Carrier of the Year, Eric Neuner achieved renown when he stumbled upon a trail of blood early one morning on Edgewood Avenue, after somebody had injured himself trying to break into a car. The paper occasionally ran stories about crimes or fires that had been reported by Missourian carriers. (January 12, 1982: “YOUTH TIPS OFF POLICE TO THEFT AT WIDOW’S HOME.”)
