Al's Paper Route and the Headlines

Al Mills delivered the daily newspaper, the Portland Press Herald, when he was probably 11-13 years of age in 1932-34 and living at the North End of Rockland His route began at Chisolm’s Store near the center of Main Street, and wandered up to Lawn Avenue and back down to end at Maverick Square. Every morning, rain or shine, snow or ice, heat or cold, he would tumble out of bed earlier than the other kids his age, dress for the weather, and set out to hike the mile or so to Chisolm’s. If the weather was good the truck had dropped a bundle of newspapers on the sidewalk, wrapped in old papers, and bound with twine. If the weather was bad, the papers were stacked under an awning or in a doorway. Al would pull out his jackknife and split the twine and lift the entire bundle into his muslin shoulder bag. In those days paper delivery was door to door, literally. Unlike today where a person in a car drives by your house and tosses a plastic wrapped newspaper onto your driveway, this was door-to-door service. Al would walk up the wooden sidewalk, place the paper in the unlocked gap between the storm door and the front door, or drop the paper into the unlocked mudroom or shed. Then turn and head for the next house, which could be a block or more away. The paperboy worked on commission, a penny or less for each paper delivered. Each Saturday he would collect for the week, and the best customers were the ones who put their money out so you didn’t have to knock, wait, and make change. The best customers were the ones who left tips, or cookies.

This was during the Great Depression, when work was hard to find. A paper boy delivery job was a good job. The papers were probably 2 to 5 cents each and the paperboy got a small cut of the profits, whittled out of his Saturday collections. Good jobs were hard to find, and the annual salary of any job you could find was likely to be low. For example, in 1932 the average school teacher earned about $1200 a year, a secretary earned about $1,000, and a hired farm hand about $215 per year (which would likely include a bed in the bunkhouse and some meals.) In contrast, a U.S. Congressman earned $8663, just a little bit more than an airline pilot. A newspaper was a nickel, a pulp novel was a dime, gasoline was 10 cents a gallon, and you could buy a set of four tires for $6.35. And, if you dared, you could take a round trip across the Atlantic on the Hindenburg for $720. Potatoes were a penny a pound and eggs were 29 cents a dozen.

Al probably read the headline when the Waldo-Hancock Bridge was dedicated in 1932, and when it was awarded the First Prize as the Most Beautiful Bridge in the United States for 1931 by the American Institute of Steel Construction. That Bridge spanned the Penobscot River near Fort Knox in Prospect, right near where Al’s uncle operated a store that served people who took the cable ferry across the Penobscot. Traffic patterns changed when the bridge was completed, and the ferry ceased to operate, and the store suffered too. Al would cross the Penobscot, by ferry, and later by bridge, as his father was originally from Down East, from Mills Point in Brooksville, where his sisters Mary Mills and Ada Tapley still lived in the family farm. In later years I remember Grampy (Albert, Sr.) driving us all down to Brooksville in his 1946 automobile, shifting gears on hills, and shining his spotlight into the meadows after dark to spot deer. His car came equipped with a built-in spotlight that stuck out from just above the drivers side passenger window. A handle inside the car connected to the spotlight so he could direct it just about anywhere. His car also had a visor over the front windshield, like a visor on a baseball cap, shielding the driver from the glare of the sun. I also remember Mary Mills, with her stately grace and bright white hair visiting Grampy in Rockland when he lived with Chloe at the Elms Front Rooms-to-Let on Camden Street, right where the parking lot for McDonald's stands today. Furthermore, there were many trips as kids to the cavernous Fort Knox, where we would climb on the giant cannons, call out through the echoing chambers underground, and crawl through spaces no adult could fit in. So, for years, that suspension bridge across the Penobscot was part of the travel adventures of the mills family.

As a kid, Al probably didn’t pay too much attention to the headlines about the Nazi rise to power in Germany in 1933; those hidden headlines would come back to haunt Americans who had grown up during the depression. Perhaps he was fascinated by the exploits of the infamous outlaws Bonnie and Clyde who were killed in a police ambush in Louisiana in 1934. He was probably more interested in Babe Ruth hitting his 700th career homer in July of 1934, a record that was deemed impossible to break. We’re not sure if Al was still delivering papers when the biggest story broke, but, every kid knew the story in 1937 when the Brady Gang shootout took place in Bangor, Maine. The Brady Gang was the most notorious of the gangsters of Prohibition. Al Brady was Public Enemy Number One on the FBI’s list of the Ten Most Wanted, with 200 robberies, four murders, and numerous assaults linked to his name. But a gun deal in Bangor, Maine led to an FBI crackdown, and a bloody shootout that riddled Brady’s gang with 60 bullets in a four minute Tommy gun battle with police on Central Street. Now that was a story every kid would read, talk about at school, and replay over and over as they played cops and robbers with toy guns made out of sticks.

Being a paper boy gives you a light on the world that other kids don’t have. Not to mention a good work ethic and a deep appreciation for how cold it can get at 4 a.m. in winter in Maine.