Good old Brother Joe, three years older than me and always a mile or two ahead in everything, had a bicycle paper route delivering the morning Albuquerque Journal to the people in our neighborhood who had ordered them.
Joe had to take a couple of weeks off one summer--I was about nine at the time--and he let me throw his route.
I had a bike and he showed me how to hang the newspaper bag on the handlebars and fold the papers so you could sling them up unto porches in a very professional way.
Then he took me over his route, showed me the houses where people had ordered and explained the business to me: "Try to get the people to pay in advance--'cause sometimes they move away or can't pay for some reason or other and you have to buy the newspapers yourself. (The paperboys bought their newspapers from the publishing plant downtown and they were delivered by truck to the houses where the paperboys lived every morning.)
"And if you have any newspapers left over, take them over to Tony's Bar on Fourth and Candelaria. There's always some drunk there that will buy them from you because he feels sorry for you. Sometimes they will even give you a quarter for them." (Newspapers cost a dime back then.)
At the end of my two weeks as a newspaper boy, I had earned about seven dollars-- enough money to buy for myself a most cool Micky Mouse wristwatch with a red plastic band from Walgreen's Drug Store. The hour and minute hands were Mickey's cartoon hands telling the time. It was so cool, I wish I had it now!
I see there is something called a "PhD in Journalism" now but I think it could all be pretty well summed up in Bro Joe's advise to me all those years ago.
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