Farewell to city column by David Staples

Final Edition; From paperboy to columnist, 'routes' in journalism run deep
The Edmonton Journal
Wed Jul 29 1998
Page: B1/ FRONT
Section: City
Byline: DAVID STAPLES
Column: David Staples
Source: THE EDMONTON JOURNAL

The clock said 3:48 a.m. I went downstairs and wondered for a moment: Is it there?

I Iooked on my front porch. No, it wasn't. A moment of disappointment, but what did I expect? It was still too early for the newspaper to have arrived. It would be here soon, though, I knew that. Indeed, today, it was my task to help deliver it, which is why I was up so early.

I was a paperboy for three years when I was a teenager. A few weeks ago, I decided I wanted to go back to my home town of Devon and help deliver the paper on my old route. You see, this is the last time I'm writing this city column in The Journal. I'm moving on to write for Southam's new national newspaper as the northern Alberta and Territorial correspondent. Before taking that step forward, however, I wanted to step back for a moment, to get back to my roots in this business, to walk the tree-lined streets of my old route where the newspaper first started to open up the world to me.

Most people pay directly these days, so you rarely see your paper deliverer. But on my old route of 55 homes, only two customers paid ahead. The rest I had to visit every week, knock on their door, interrupt their supper, their television, their relaxation, and ask for my $1.25, or whatever it was.

Two images stick out in my mind from that time.

One: the Ashtons' house had a particularly beautiful sounding doorbell. One day, I rang the doorbell to collect. No one appeared to be home. The lights were off. For whatever reason, I just kept ringing that pretty-sounding bell, daydreaming for a moment. After about five minutes of ringing, a very tired and ill-looking Mrs. Ashton came to the door in her housecoat. I was mortified. But the poor woman wasn't angry. She, too, was embarrassed, believing, I suppose, that somehow I had found her hiding out and wouldn't leave until she paid her bill.

Two: the one place I dreaded calling on most of all. In that apartment lived an old man who had a deformed face, a slow shuffling walk, slurred speech and stumps for hands. Most likely these were war wounds, but I couldn't see a brave soldier, only a hideous-looking, frightening fellow.

It was good for me, though, to meet such a man, and to deal with everyone else on the route. It helped me to break out of my little world of friends and family, to go into strange homes, if only for a moment, and see how other people lived.

Bundles of ink-scented Journals used to be dropped at my house for delivery after I came home from school. Now the paper is dropped early in the morning at a central point. A person needs a car to pick them up and do the job. The work is done almost exclusively by adults, men and women like Gary and Roselien Anderson of Devon, both in their 50s, both with other full-time jobs. Gary is a mechanic, Roselien an LPN.

"That's a licensed practical nurse?" I ask.

"No,'' she laughs, "a low-paid nurse."

Gary and Roselien do my old route, starting work at 5 a.m. Gary drives a truck, Roselien a minivan. Each takes a bundle of papers, then heads out. I go with Roselien, taking turns with her dropping papers on doorsteps, in mailboxes and behind screen doors, taking care not to scatter the sections.

When I delivered papers, only a few houses on each street didn't get The Journal. Now fewer houses on each street subscribe. The Journal used to be the only kid in town, says Dave Reidie, who runs the newspaper sales department here. There wasn't any other daily paper and there were only two TV stations. But now the market is clogged with papers, magazines and specialty TV channels.

Even so, more than 120,000 homes still get the Journal delivered each day (with another 30,000 or so sold in stores), and Reidie says home delivery numbers are going up across the country the past two years.

The Devon route pays Gary and Roselien Anderson about $230 a month. The customers pay them $15.23 a month, a reasonable price in my mind, but then I grew up to love the paper and idolize newspaper and magazine journalists.

In my paperboy days, I started reading Journal sports columnist Wayne Overland, and my subsequent heroes in journalism were often, but not always, sports writers as well.

Eddie Keen. Terry Jones. Earl Macrae. Bob Greene. Gary Smith. Jimmy Cannon. Studs Terkel. Frank DeFord. Curry Kirkpatrick. Mike Royko. Allen Abel. Cam Cole. By way of their written words, all these journalists became welcome friends in my home.

From Smith came deep and touching psychological profiles of famous people. From Greene, extraordinary tales about ordinary people. From Cannon, a kind of column writing that is close to poetry. From Terkel, people talking about themselves in their own moving words. From Cole, a smart, funny and highly readable discourse about my favourite Canadian teams and athletes.

I've written this column since 1992. If anything, I've learned not to measure myself against my heroes. I'd never win that way. I had to find my own way. In the end, I've come to enjoy the work.

Newspapering is a great job, especially for a young person. It allowed me to meet and interview people I'd never otherwise have met, from the artists like Norval Morrisseau and Alex Janvier to the lady who had taught her magpie to speak, from sports heroes like Wayne Gretzky and Elvis Stojko to the crotchety, old ex-U.S. infantryman who was gunning down his neighbours' cats in Lamont and boasting about it.

Newspapering has shown me much of the world. Newspapers bring the world to you.

Today's newspaper, like all newspapers, will be gone as soon as it's read; discarded, recycled, forgotten.

But that one moment each day when the paper arrives at your house, well, it is a very welcome and interesting friend indeed. And it's been my pleasure to be that friend to some of you for a time.