I got to Disneyland because of a newspaper route contest and a father who could never afford to take
A Paper Route Used to Be a Boy's Best Shot at Seeing the Rest of the World. |
I got to Disneyland because of a newspaper route contest and a father who could never afford to take us there. The route manager stood on our porch with his cap in his hands, and my mother put her hand to her mouth and cried. |
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News for the America we remember |
I can still see him standing on our porch as plain as last Tuesday, my route manager with his cap in his hands and a grin he was trying and failing to keep official. I had just come in from my morning route, my sneakers wet through from the grass, my canvas bag still on one shoulder, heavy as a brick even though I had emptied it house by house. My mother came to the screen door wiping her hands on a dish towel, and before the man even spoke, something in his face told her this was good news of the rarest kind. “Sam,” he said. “You won the trip to Disneyland.” My mother put her hand to her mouth. Then she laughed once, sharp and surprised, and cried a little right there on the porch. |
That prize was the reward for the top paper boys. The ones who sold the most new subscriptions. So I had worked that route like a campaign. I knew every porch, every loose step, every mailbox that stuck in humid weather. There was a collie on Maple that hated me with an Old Testament fury, and a black mutt on Washington that came flying under the hedge so fast it seemed shot from a gun. There was old Mrs. Delaney at the end of Wimberly, a widow who lived alone with a cat and left me a quarter every Friday in an envelope with my name printed carefully on it. A quarter was not nothing then. Neither was being noticed. Most mornings I started before dawn, the fresh papers giving off that thick inky smell of newsprint I can still summon if I close my eyes. |
I wanted that trip with a kind of clean desperation only a child can feel. I knew better than to ask my father to take us. He worked at the factory and did not make enough for dreams with airplane tickets attached. He carried a metal lunch pail and worked whatever on his feet until they were raw, coming home with the smell of oil and hot metal in his clothes. He was a proud man. He paid his bills. He kept food on the table. He did not complain. But I understood, even as a boy, the difference between what a man provides and what he wishes he could provide. That is one of the hard lessons children in factory towns learn early. Love is real. So are limits. |
The trip has the quality of a dream that somehow never faded. |
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Picture this—the next time you fly you'll be on a private jet. You'll enjoy: |
Private boarding—no more busy terminals—with zero crowds and zero long lines. Unlimited baggage allowance—banish fees for good. Complimentary organic coffee and snacks.
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