RateItAll: The Opinion Network

If I remember right, I was 13 years old when I started doing this; it was pretty much the only job a 13-year old was going to get in my north NJ neighborhood at the time. I delivered "The Wayne Today" which was a twice-weekly publication put out by Harold Matzner, who was better known as the defendant represented by F. Lee Bailey in a then-notorious and convoluted murder case of the 1960's that involved adultery, infidelity, pornography, counterfeiting, and a gay mobster known as Gabriel "Johnny the Walk" DeFranco (in fairness to Matzner, he was ultimately exonerated and I believe it was pretty much proven that the "case" against him was a frame-up by the same corrupt Passaic County officialdom that had it in for Ruben "Hurricane" Carter-- the only book that ever came out on the case that I know about is "Victims of Justice" by Dorothe Matzner and Margaret English). The stacks of papers and their multitude of inserts were delivered en masse to a wooden box located near my house. I would lug the bundles into my parents' laundry room where I would then commence getting them ready for delivery. This was a dirty, tedious procedure that involved wrapping the advertising inserts into the actual newspaper and then inserting the resulting bundle as neatly as possible into a clear plastic bag. To pass the time, my parents provided me with a transistor radio that only seemed to play AM radio, and I remember hearing a lot of "Billy, Don't Be A Hero" and "The Night Chicago Died" and "Seasons In The Sun" while I wrapped, and wrapped, and wrapped, and...the horrible music, of course, did nothing to relieve my adolescent torment; if anything, it increased it. By the time I finished wrapping, my hands were black with newsprint, and felt as if I had been picking cotton in Texas for hours. Then I bundled the wrapped papers into a big canvas bag, slung it over my shoulder, and set out unsteadily on my Schwinn bicycle. Although my route was fairly long, it didn't present too much of a problem until the very end, when I had to pedal uphill on a major roadway that bordered on being a highway. In retrospect, it seems like it was actually pretty dangerous to be riding up that hill on a flimsy bike with that heavy bag causing me to sway and totter ominously toward the oncoming cars, but somehow or other I managed, although if the weather was too hot or too wintry it could be that much more excruciating. At that age, the money helped me buy records and paperback books and comics (those that it didn't help me buy, I stole). At 15, we moved to central Jersey, and I again delivered papers for awhile, but the minimal pay and the dreary nature of the work palled quickly on me and I gave it up for something that seemed a bit more "mature" and lucrative (stocking shelves in a pharmacy...my boss there was a tyrant, and I used to steal condoms, hypodermic needles, and paperback books from him as a sort of compensation for having to take his abuse, but that's another story...). I've been away from 13 years of age and the delivery of newspapers for a long, LONG time now, and I'm sure the nature of newspaper delivery has changed radically. In my neighborhood now, an adult delivers them by car during the pre-dawn hours. In fairness, for a kid (particularly a lazy, uninspired one like me), it wasn't the worst job in the world, and God knows I've had far worse ones between then and now, but it's not an occupation I retain pleasant memories of either.

I did this back in 1981 when I was 5. But I sat down on grocery store benches just to deliver them. It was fun though, cuz I used that money to buy me lotsa ice cream.

Back in the Sixties, I was a paperboy for the local paper in Pico Rivera, The Times Post. I had the canvas bags that went on the handle bars. I had to fold hundreds of papers,but I enjoyed the money. I was one of the few kids that had money in his pockets, so it was worth the effort. Great first job for a kid.

The horror....My first job when I was a kid . This is where I learned how most people cant even handle the responsibility of paying a poor kid $2.50 a week for a friggin newspaper but they got 3 new cars in the driveway.

In my town, the dailies are delivered at 3 and 4 in the morning. This pretty much lets out most teen-agers. The bi-weeklies are more flexible, but only pay a few cents a paper delivered. My kids did this (the biweekly) for a few years from the time they were 11 to about 15, at which point it seemed like too little money for too much work to them.

this was great. i used to deliver the AM paper, and then later on the night one. i'd put my walkman on and listen to music. i was a child of the 1980's, so the Monkees resurgence in 1986, and the cassette reissues of their albums, got me through a lot of cold mornings.

I really loved being a paperboy. It taught me a lot about money and people. Actually, I saved from age 11 and bought my 1st car with my paperboy money. I didn't mind collecting the money and would almost knock people's doors down to get them to pay me. Each cent I made was one cent closer to the car I wanted to eventually buy.

My experiences as a paper boy was just awful. As being a paperboy for my first job, this job is borderline a violation of child-labor laws. First, you must get up really early to wrap hundreds of papers into a small bag, then deliver them to the likes of many scattered houses in as many as three different neighborhoods. Then you have to repeat that every morning till you decide to quit. And the pay is minimal as I got paid 200 a month. Not to mention, collecting the fees was a hassle all in itself.

I wasn't a paperboy, but when I was 15 years old I wrote a weekly article for a small town newspaper that I lived in. It was an article telling the news and events of the people that lived in the Oilfield of that county. It was a really boring job, but it was an experience for someone my age as I actually got paid for it. It was very important to me at the time.