When I turned 11 years old, I joined the Boy Scouts. Our meetings were on Tuesday nights at our church. Our troop went camping on the first weekend of every month, rain or shine, hot or cold, there we went. A boy scout troop is divided into patrols. Our patrol was made up of twelve kids in our neighborhood. Boy Scouts were really popular in the 1960s. It was great to go camping.
In the fall of 1968, our scout master announced that a national Boy Scout Jamboree was to be held the next July in Idaho. We all got excited until we found out the cost was $350. Minimum wage was 25 cents an hour. My dad made $3600 a year teaching and coaching. I knew that I would have to find a way to earn the money to go. Two days later Ben, my best friend, and I were sitting in our front yard when Coach Broussard drove up to ask if I wanted a job. He was a route distributor for the Beaumont Enterprise and The Beaumont Journal newspapers. Then he gave us a great idea. There were two routes open. We could take both routes and work as partners.
Ben and I found out that to take a paper route was a lot of responsibility and hard work. The Beaumont Enterprise was the morning paper 7 days a week. The Beaumont Journal was delivered Monday through Saturday afternoons. As a carrier, you bought the papers from the newspaper company, the rubber bands, the plastic sleeves to put the papers in when it was raining, and the canvas bag to carry them in. Then to get our money, we had to go collecting from the customers each month, door to door.
Ben and I worked out a plan. On Thursdays and Sundays, both of us threw the morning papers because the store ads made the paper very large. In the mornings, Coach Donaho brought the papers at 5 a.m., and in the afternoons, his wife brought them at 3 p.m. We would fold the papers, fill the canvas bag, and get on our bikes to deliver. Plus, we had to memorize who got the morning paper, the afternoon paper, and who got both. To help our memory, we painted an E, J, or C on the street in front of the houses. This led later to a side business on painting street numbers on the curbs.
We actually made it work. The scouts let us pay 10 installments of $35. Having a good partner and friend to work with made all the difference. If one of us were sick or needed to go out of town, we would hire one of our friends to help our partner.
We learned a lot throwing newspapers. Some customers were very nice; many gave us a tip at Christmas. But some people would take the paper and then never pay for it. We learned that icy cold rain was no fun. We also learned that some dogs did bite.
Eventually we graduated to using a 1965 Volkswagen Beetle with a sunroof to throw papers. Ben drove and I sat on top wearing my dad’s Navy leather flight jacket and aviator hat, zinging the papers onto front porches. And we made about $200 a month.
Finally, July 1969 came and off we went to Idaho on a chartered jet. There were boys from all over the world at the Jamboree. We were lodged in tents laid out like a city. In our group from Southeast Texas, there were kids from five Texas counties, including two who brought their KKK robes. Across the road to our left were kids from Puerto Rico. To our right was a troop from Boston. Across the road was a group from New York City. I made two life-long friends: Alan and James from New York. Alan became a food scientist teaching at University of Massachusetts, and James became a professor who taught social work in New Hampshire. We witnessed the first moon landing on a huge drive-in movie screen at the Jamboree.
Was it worth all of that hard work? Getting up at 4:30 a.m., getting thrown off the roof of the VW with dogs in the road, and putting up with deadbeat customers?
By the way, we came up with a plan for deadbeats…the newspaper company made us deliver to them each month whether they paid or not, but they got month old papers. Was it worth it? You bet it was!
