What I Learned Delivering the News

My good friend, Mike Johnson, recently wrote a nice piece here on LinkedIn about his days as a newspaper boy in Minneapolis.

And the memories of my mornings doing the same came flooding back.

There I was: wheeling my bike out of the garage in the predawn hour. I can still see the 125 or so Chicago Tribunes and Sun Times lying bundled at the end of the driveway. I would rubber-band each paper and load it into the oversized basket attached to the bike’s handlebar. Still others went into two baskets that bridged my bike’s rear tire. Loading was an easy task for most of the week, but Sunday was an event unto itself. More below.

Fully loaded, I lumbered off.

Art and science

I was not a drop-the-paper-at-the-end-of-driveway kind of guy. I knew enough about customer service to realize that on the porch was better. Yes, customers remembered that extra touch as the holidays approached, but of equal importance, there was no challenge in just dropping the paper on the driveway apron and pedaling on.

No. At my young age, there was a thrill in

gauging the speed of the bike,

the angle of the bike to the house,

the weight of the paper, and then

LAUNCHING

the morning’s news in a perfect arc across a lawn,

watching it land flat on the porch, and finally

skid gently to the door mat.

Fist pump.

Maybe those quick calculations helped me earn A’s in math throughout high school.

Lessons learned

Reflecting now as a much older man, I know this early morning ritual helped me develop qualities that have paid me dividends ever since:

?  Discipline: There was that matter of the pre-dawn alarm going off.

?  Perseverance: Snow? Rain? Heat? Gloom of night? The USPS had nothing on me.

?  Physical labor: Tired muscles really can join in a chorus of “Job well done!”

Real lessons learned

But even at the time, I knew this:

? I was and still am grateful for the smell of morning: the incomparable freshness of a spring rain, the bouquet of summer, that slight mustiness of fall, and the pepper of super-chilled winter air.

? I was and still am grateful for the sounds of morning: birds awakening and calling dibs on the nearest bug, or a chippy squirrel chiding me because I rode too close to a buried acorn.

? And I was and still am grateful – as the Medicare mailings pile up – for those first stirrings of financial independence: the feeling as the bank teller handed me back my passbook with a new line showing my increased savings. (Passbook? Note to some readers: Feel free to Google it.)

But most of all, I was grateful for being able to connect with my dad.

My dad, the dapper young guy at right with the newsboy cap and tie, grew up poor in a Polish neighborhood on Chicago’s west side. Any money he earned doing odd jobs as a pre-teen and teen went right to his mother to help pay for food. Later, as a young man during the Great Depression, he knew that securing any work was a blessing, and it often literally meant survival.

So he didn’t know about things like after-school activities, and certainly not sports. He was never there cheering me on at football games with “Nice block!” or yelling at my coach to “Put him in!”

Making Connections

But he knew work, and come 5am on Sunday morning, he was standing next to me in our garage, stuffing the news section with an enormous ad and comics section. Serenading us was the hum of the florescent fixture above our heads and the sounds of Chicago’s WGN AM radio station. Think Mantovani. (AM radio? Mantovani? Note to some readers: Feel free to Google them.)

Stuffing the Sunday papers made them impossible to rubber-band and conceptually impossible to “launch” onto the porch without destroying the occasional empty milk jug or potted plant.

So instead, we loaded the pregnant papers into every available inch of our car, and then my dad drove my route with me hanging out of the trunk.

I’d leap out of the back, grab a paper, drop it carefully on the “Welcome” mat, and run back to the car, as my dad slowly drove down the block.

Afterwards at the house, he’d cook me breakfast. Maybe he’d ask me about school, or my best friend, Doug. I don’t remember. I just remember being with him.

Years later when I worked overnight as a grocery stock clerk, accumulating all the financial independence – I would need to put myself through college without a loan – my dad would drop me off and pick me up because we only had the one car.

As I walked out of the store just as the sun was starting to stretch, I'd take in the early morning smells and sounds.

I would get into the car with my muscles silently humming “Job well done!” and the first words out of my dad’s mouth would be “How was work?”

It wasn’t everything I wanted from him, but it was what he could give, and it taught me this: If you really want to connect with someone, you have to meet them where they are.

Not a bad lesson for today.

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Much thanks to Susan Rooks, the Grammar Goddess, for her support.

I am a certified executive coach and principal at Quetico Leadership & Career Coaching. I partner with individuals to remove the obstacles that stand in their way of being truly engaged and fulfilled in their work or career. We work too many hours to be otherwise.