When I was 6 years old, I had a paper route. I am sure of this because one of my customers gave my mother a handwritten note I put in her newspaper.
At the bottom of the note she wrote, “He’s 6 ½ years old.” I have the note framed, and it hangs on the wall along the stairs leading to my office. The sentiments it expresses remain true for me some 50-some-odd years later. In the handwriting of a 6-year-old — all-caps with no punctuation — it reads:
DEAR CUSTOMER:
THANK YOU FOR SUBSCRIBING TO THE PAPER I WANT TO GIVE YOU GOOD SERVICE IF IT ISN’T ALL RIGHT PLEASE CALL ME AT FA8-6927 YOURS TRULY BIRNEY IMES III
My route was carved out of a much larger one run by Larry Vassar. Each afternoon Larry would deposit my little bundle of newspapers — I had 12 customers — next to a large oak tree in the front yard of the photographer O.N. Pruitt at the intersection of Chickasaw Drive and Bluecutt Road.
I would walk down the long hill on Chickasaw, gather my papers and walk up and down the driveways of the neighborhood putting The Dispatch behind the screen doors of my customers.
We were called “Little Merchants.”
When I called my mother Friday to ask about my career as a Little Merchant, she remembered two things. That the Richardson’s collie harassed me until I popped it in the nose with a pine cone and Larry Vassar took me to the county fair the night they let the Little Merchants in free.
As anyone who had a paper route during that time will tell you, the job provided invaluable life lessons about human nature and money management.
Walking up and down those hills had benefits, too. Years later, in junior high school, when Oop Swoope had us run laps around the field behind Joe Cook, I found it effortless.
At some point I “outgrew” the route and passed it down to my No. 1 substitute, my sister Tanner, who is quick to acknowledge she was not prime Little Merchant material. Tanner soon handed it off to brother Stephen. By the time Stephen gave up the route, it had grown to more than 60 customers.
Sundays in the winter were especially tough. Seems like it was a lot colder in those days. I’d literally try to stay on the sunny side of the street as I walked my route on those frigid mornings.
What was really great, though, was Christmas Eve. We delivered our papers in the middle of the night, the same time Santa was making his rounds.
As for my position on Santa, I was still a true believer, though skepticism was growing. When enlightenment came, it was unexpected and unequivocal.
On a certain Christmas Eve my main substitute, Tanner, and I were delivering the papers together. We’d done the route except for our two most far-flung customers, Ray and Dai Waters and Lynn and Nancy Smith. Lynn was an FBI agent, so, naturally, we were more circumspect in his presence than we were with other grown-ups.
I guess it was around midnight or 1 a.m. Christmas morning. Needless to say, it was heady stuff for a 6- and a 7-year-old to be out in the world this time of night, and no doubt Tanner and I were chattering away with excitement as we entered the Smiths’ front yard.
There we saw something that made us freeze in our tracks. Through the picture window, we saw agent Smith and his wife putting out unwrapped presents under the Christmas tree. Suddenly the front door opened and Mr. Lynn came out shushing us up, telling us to be quiet.
Tanner handed him a paper, wordlessly.
We were quiet on the walk home. Though, as Tanner remembers it, I did have something to say.
“We can’t ever tell Mother we know,” I said.
She agreed.
Though, I don’t think it would have mattered. Our mother loves Christmas as much as any kid. Even to this day.
Merry Christmas, Mother.
Merry Christmas to all.
Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.
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