Still playing around with yesterday's images from the SL and the Zeiss 28mm Biogon. I wonder what they look like in black and white. Oops. Excuse me! I wonder what they look like in monochrome.

 

Apropos of nothing, I was once a newspaper delivery boy. I was reminded of that this morning when B and I were out for our walk through the hills in our neighborhood. It was during my fresh man year of high school. I delivered the San Antonio Express News and the New York Times to some of the homes in my community. Almost everyone took the local paper back then. About a quarter also took the Times.

It was not my favorite job, looking back. I had to get up well before sunrise, gather up the papers that were dropped off via a big, white truck, roll them and bind them with string or twine to keep them from coming apart and blowing away, then stuff them into the wire baskets on my bicycle and peddle off into the darkness to get them to the subscribers in time to read over breakfast. It was a neighborhood of assorted professionals and business owners and they mostly seemed to be early risers. I'd catch hell if the papers weren't on the driveways or on the front porches by the time the sun came up. Older guys in ties needed their fix of daily news...

Sometimes I would sleep through my alarm clock and my father (one of the early risers) would gently shake me awake and make sure I got up. A couple of times I came down with a cold or the flu and I remember my dad very professionally assessing my condition and telling me to go back to sleep. Before heading in to work at the hospital those mornings he went out with my paper address list, found the papers, bound them and delivered them. In his suit and tie. Never complained. 

The early mornings I dreaded most were the ones during which it was raining, sleeting, snowing or otherwise wet. If we had rain, or strongly suspected there would be rain, I would have to roll the papers up and then insert each newspaper into a waterproof, plastic sleeve. If there was a lot of news on a day like that, or a lot of advertising circulars, getting the rolled papers into the sleeves took a lot of time and ingenuity. It was an "art" I never truly mastered.

There was something odd about collecting the money from people at the end of each month. I'd have a ledger from the newspaper that laid out how much each house owed for their papers. The best time to catch everyone at home was the dinner hour since so few people routinely went out to eat back then. Most people expected to see me and had an envelope with cash in it next to the front door so they could hand it to me when I rang the door bell. Some people played hard to get and inadvertently taught me the time value of money...  The best customers were friends and co-workers of my father. They routinely tipped me more than the cost of their bills. And they were kind and supportive.

My job throwing papers onto driveways lasted from the end of 8th grade, through the long Summer, and up to the day I tried out for the high school swim team. I made the cut and had to abandon my early "career" in "journalism" because in order to be on the swim team I had to make it to both of the daily practices. The first practice started at 5:30 a.m. A direct conflict to early newspaper delivery...

My father suggested I write a "thank you" note to each of my customers explaining my schedule change and giving them the telephone number to call if they didn't get their paper on time. I took his advice and learned a bit about the value of good customer relations when I subsequently dated some of the former customers' daughters, or applied for Summer jobs in the following years at some of their companies. 

The most valuable lessons I learned doing the newspaper delivery gig were: You get a lot more done if you get up early. Making your own money is fun and empowering. Being organized and disciplined smooths out some of the inevitable bumps in life and makes the day-to-day work easier. And, finally, it's really wonderful to know my dad always had my back. And he did for many decades afterwards. I tried to return the favor whenever I could.

My next Summer job was lifeguarding. That was a lot more fun.