Wow, very nostalgic. I delivered the Berkeley (CA) Daily Gazette for a couple years, can't believe I did that. I rode a balloon-tire Huffy with a heavy duty steel rack in back on which I hung the canvas bag. The bag had a big pocket on each side and a hole in the middle, so if you walked the route you could put your head thru the hole and carry the bags that way.

The bundle of sixty papers would be dumped on the street corner, and they gave us a round piece of steel, looked like those four-way spoke wrenches, but you used the small notches to cut the wire holding the bundle. The Gazette was usually thin enough that you could fold the papers in a "tomahawk fold," (nothing to do with the Atlanta Braves, hey they were still in Milwaukee in those days). Sixty folded papers went into the canvas bags, then the fun began. I'd ride down to the first street on the route, reach back and pull a paper out of the quiver, zip onto the sidewalk, then hurl that sucker across the lawn and onto the porch. Wham! Right against the screen door, boy would that piss them off if they were home. A low shot, skidding over the concrete walkway, maybe some damage to the newsprint. A high shot,ending up on the roof. Oh well, maybe they'll climb up and get it. Or I'd hear about it at monthly collection time. End of route, and I've got an extra paper I can bring home. Did I miss a house? Or maybe I'd be short and I'd have to call the DA (district advisor) when I got home to have him deliver that last house.

Yeah, pretty sad that today the paper is delivered by car by some older person. But I think the paper route really honed my bike skills. Throwing a paper off the bike is not unlike doing a handsling in a madison. I never thought about that...

- Luis