In the past, many local papers found their way to your porch — and hopefully not the bushes or roof — by bicycle. Mostly boys — and a handful of girls — braved the elements to deliver the news to your door.
For some it was their first paying job. It gave them an opportunity to develop work skills and discipline that would serve them for decades to come. I asked a few what it was like.
Ted Sakai said, “I delivered The Honolulu Advertiser while growing up in Hilo. My circulation manager would bring my bundle of newspapers around 5 o’clock every morning.
“By 5:30 a.m. I’d be on the road on my trusty Schwinn bike, the papers in the sturdy canvas bag fitted on my handlebars. It would take me about an hour to finish my route, after which I would have breakfast and then go off to school.
“My route included Waiakea town, a fishing village in Hilo filled with little shops, before the 1960 tsunami hit.
“About once a week, I would treat myself at the Amano store next to the Suisan fish auction and pay a nickel for a freshly cooked fishcake. It was about 4 inches in diameter and had gobo inside. Soooo ono!
“The part I disliked the most, other than the dogs snapping at my heels, was collection. Once a month we would go to each customer and collect $1.25 per subscription.
“A special customer I had was Mrs. Okamoto, who worked in a bank. Every year, she would give me a Christmas ‘bonus.’ Usually, it was a silver dollar. Once she gave me a $2 bill. I still have it.”
Mangoes
Ray Sokugawa said he helped a friend who had a Star-Bulletin paper route.
“The best part was riding on the sidewalk, picking and eating overhanging, half-ripe, common mangoes.”
Folding the paper
“In the 1950s I delivered the Advertiser in Manoa,” Nick Hormann told me. “I had to be up at 4 a.m., folding the papers at the Toyo Superette on East Manoa Road.”
Hormann described the folding: “Sit on the ground with a stack of papers between your legs. The fold is on the left. Roll the paper towards the far side, stopping a few inches from the end. Then reach out with your left hand and create a pocket at the fold.
“Continue rolling the paper into the pocket with your right hand. Finally, twist the whole thing tight and whack it on the ground, vertically, serrated edges down. Now you have a compact missile to hurl onto lawns and porches up and down the valley.”
Kakaako
Wayne Shiohira wrote: “In the early 1960s I had a newspaper route in Kakaako for a Japanese-American publication called the Hawaii Hochi.
“The route covered a large area, from Ala Moana Center to the downtown post office, and from South King Street to Kewalo Basin. It took me a little over an hour to deliver 45 papers.
“I’d pick up my stack of papers in front of Eki Cyclery on King Street. Jack Eki, one of the co-owners, helped me to buy a new bike by monthly installments. My Schwinn Typhoon had a 14-inch gooseneck and a front rack to hold up the heavy white canvas newspaper bag. Also, a box spring seat for comfort, and a fox tail … to look spiffy.
“It had black fenders with white stripes, that helped a lot during the rainy season. In return for his help, I gave Mr. Eki a paper every day.
“Many of Kakaako’s residents were the descendants of a way of life that centered around the fishing industry and Kewalo Basin.
“It was hard and dangerous, which bonded neighbors who were proud of its residents. Kakaako was known for its fishermen, barefoot football teams, boxers and even musicians, like Gabby Pahinui and Sol Bright.
“Kakaako has gone from mostly residential to industrial and is now swinging back towards residential. But with technology in play now, the days of corner newspaper stands and paperboys are gone.”
A dollar a day
Gareth Sakakida said, “I had a paper route for the afternoon Star-Bulletin from 1967-1972 in lower Pawaa. I recall making about a dollar a day for about one to two hours of work. No weekends off, no holidays, no vacations, rain or shine.
“Having the route precluded me from joining Little League. I could go to games on Saturday mornings but could not attend practices, so there went that.
“On the flip side, collecting from one customer gave me enough to go to a Hawaii Islander game and get a hot dog or hamburger and Coke!”
Papergirls
In the mid-1970s there were about a dozen Honolulu papergirls. Jo Anne Yamamoto said she wasn’t one, but helped her cousin fold the papers with her mom.
“We sat on the shady veranda, folded and rolled them really tight. We then sealed it with a strip of old newsprint and rice paste. My hands would get all black from the newspaper ink.
“My cousin had a big route and made enough money to purchase a new bike.”
Drunken sailor
Hiroshi Kato wrote, “In the mid-1940s, before I had a regular paper route, I would walk though Wailuku town with 25 copies of the Maui News and stand on the corner of Market and Vineyard streets to sell what was left.
“On one stormy evening I was soaking wet before I could find some cover. I met my best friend, who was also a paperboy, with a stack of soaked newspapers. He asked me what happened to my papers, and I said, ‘One drunken sailor bought all of them.’
“On our way home we took a shortcut through a local bar, and there was the ‘drunken sailor,’ cold sober and carrying on an intellectual conversion with his buddy.” He had bought the papers so Kato could call it a day and go home.
Model trains
Chuck Moore said, “I had a Star-Bulletin paper route in Manoa in the 1950s. I was a university ‘brat,’ as my dad was a UH professor.
“The paper gave us a bill weekly, which showed the number of papers taken, a price in fractions of a cent for each, with a total.
“I took the bill to an office where they had a fancy ‘adding machine.’ If you multiplied the data, the total they billed the paperboy was always more than what was due. Hmmmm.
“We were to collect from our customers weekly on Thursday or Friday evening. We were still under curfew restrictions, so when the siren blew, you’d better be off the street. If you had a large route, there was no way you could get it all done in one night.
“One night I was late as usual, and went to collect from a customer on Vancouver Drive. He was a judge, I think. His house had a basement, and while I was waiting for my money, I spied a model train layout through his cellar window. Being a lifelong train fan, I asked him about it. Well, that did it.
“I didn’t get home till after 10, and my mother was frantic! From then on, if I was nowhere to be found, she knew where I was.”
Coincidence
I mentioned Chuck Moore’s experience in my Rearview Mirror Insider newsletter, and Willson Moore Jr. told me that judge was his father, Circuit Judge Willson Moore Sr. The two Willson Moores are not related to Chuck Moore.
“My father could build anything,” Willson Moore Jr. told me. “He excavated under the house to create a basement room for his beloved Lionel trains.
“He played incessantly with them in his leisure hours. He had passenger trains, freight cars with operable cranes or coal hoppers. The track went around the room at shoulder height, through a ‘town’ of lead figures, train stations, water tanks, lumber piles, etc., all of which he fashioned and painted.”
Did you have a paper route in the islands? I’d love to hear about it.
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Contact Bob Sigall, author of the five “The Companies We Keep” books, at Sigall@Yahoo.com.
