The year was 1944. Dad’s family had just moved to Chatham Street in New Haven, Connecticut. He was not quite 14, and already hungry to earn some money.

Before long, he had a job as a paperboy.

The Morning Journal and Courier had been around since 1848. As indicated by its name, it was the morning paper, so Dad had to roll out of bed early – about 5:30am – six days a week, no matter what the weather.

With 35 or so families on his list – and no bicycle – Dad had to hustle, often pre-dawn. He became skilled at scaling the papers (that’s paperboy lingo for throwing). He’d pull a newspaper out of his cloth satchel, fold it into a “chuck,” and toss the now-square paper onto a porch. He even figured out how to land them neatly on the duplex’s second-floor porches. (I’m picturing a frisbee toss.)

Late afternoon on Saturdays, Dad went door to door to collect payment for the week’s papers. To me, that sounds like the worst part of the job, but Dad loved it.

About half of his route was on the other side of Grand Avenue from where he lived. The neighborhood included lots of Italian immigrants.

“They’d answer the door and invite me to supper!”

Dad says each house smelled better than the last, with supper cooking or already on the table. Spaghetti. Lasagna. Minestrone. A few times, he was even offered a glass of wine. Although tempted, he begged off, knowing his mom would have supper ready when he got home.

When the paperboy finished up the week’s collections, he’d wait at an assigned street corner and specific time for an older newspaper employee to drive by and collect the coins (cash-only back then).

Dad enjoyed this first job a lot. His “clients” were friendly and nearly always paid up on time.

But after about a year, when the chance came to work as a soda jerk, it was time to move on to more hours and better pay.

As Dad finished up his last week as a paperboy, he stopped by each house one more time, smelled the aroma of family feasts, collected the week’s payments, and turned over the till to the older employee one last time.

Or actually, no.

“The guy never showed up!” Dad recalls. “I waited and waited on the corner for him. Finally, I just went home.

“I guess I still owe him somewhere around six dollars …”

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