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Last week, in class, Dr. Lashley mentioned the differences in children working after school jobs twenty, thirty, forty years ago compared to children in today’s society.  He specifically brought up the example of a child being a newspaper carrier in his or her neighborhood in the past.  

I immediately thought back to my childhood and the ten years that I delivered the Pottsville Republican Newspaper...now known as the Republican & Herald after the Evening Herald and Pottsville Republican newspapers merged.

     

The newspaper route was so large that two of my brothers and I had to split the route up in three ways.  We had a system in place where we alternated the three routes every week.  Route #1 consisted of just our street, which was the easiest and quickest route.  Route # 2 consisted of the streets a few blocks away from our house while Route # 3 took the longest as the houses were the farthest from our house and were spread out on those streets. 

Even though the route was shared by my brothers and me, it was in my older brother’s name.  This fact made my older brother the official “boss” of the newspaper route.  He created rules and stuck to them.  He expected nothing less from my twin and me.  For example, he wanted every newspaper customer to have their newspapers delivered either in their mailbox, inside their door, or on their porch by 4pm sharp.  It didn’t matter that I didn’t get home from school until between 3:35 and 3:45pm and had a late start on rolling and bagging the newspapers.  It didn’t matter that I would stop and visit with the elderly customers and enjoy a lemonade and snack with some of them on their porches.  It didn’t matter if I had Route # 3 and it’d be 4pm by the time I was starting the route.  On the days I was not home by 4pm, I was docked pay for that day. 

Of course, at the time, from 2^nd grade through 10^th grade, I would grow angry with my brother and wonder why it mattered so much to him that the customers have their papers by 4pm.  I would complain about how unfair it was for me to be expected to adhere to that rule when my school dismissed students later than his school.  I would beg my Mom to drive me in an effort to help me get home on time, especially when I had Route # 3. 

I was able to relax a little bit in 11^th and 12^th grades when my older brother was no long in charge of the route since he had graduated high school and moved away to attend college in Pittsburgh.  In his absence, my twin, little brother, and I continued delivering the newspaper to our customers.  However, we grew lax in the delivery of newspapers by 4pm and gradually made sure to have the newspapers delivered by 5pm, the newspaper’s guidelines.  Our loyal customers had grown used to our punctuality and did not do well with this change.

Admittedly, by the time we gave up the newspaper route, we were not running a tight ship as we had when my older brother was in charge.  Another huge change was the fact that Saturday’s afternoon paper was changed to being delivered by 7am in the mornings.  This was not a change I took kindly to as a junior and senior in high school who loved to sleep in on the weekends.    Additionally, as the three of us took on other part time jobs (retail, restaurant, babysitting, and country club work), we did not feel that we needed to continue with the newspaper route since we made more money in the other part time jobs.  By the time my twin and I graduated high school, my little brother had to deliver the entire route by himself.  The other newspaper carriers did not have routes as extensive as ours since by then the newspaper company had smaller paper routes for their carriers that did not cover as large of a territory.  I now wonder if that was in part due to more people getting their news online instead of in print.

Looking back I’m glad that I had the experience of delivering the newspaper for ten years, no matter how much I complained about it.  Having this job instilled in us:  responsibility through having to find a substitute carrier when we went on trips, a hard work ethic in needing to get the newspapers rolled, bagged, and delivered on time, money management skills, and a sense of giving back to the community.  It saddens me to think that children and teenagers in this day and age may not have the chance to benefit from hard work and gain the skills that we did through not having the opportunity to work in after school jobs due to increases and advances in technology that are able to do the jobs instead of people.

I also think about how child labor laws have changed over the years (for the good) and wonder what life will be like forty years from now in terms of after school jobs for children/teenagers.  Will we live in such a digital and technological world that we will not have any kind of human interaction in the drive-thrus, coffeehouses, or when shopping?   Will everything be through machines and “robots”?  What will that mean for the future generations in terms of responsibility, work ethics, money management skills, etc.?