The loss of the Newark Star Ledger, the only daily newspaper that swept New Jersey since the demise of the Newark Evening News. The loss of The Courier, the weekly newspaper with its OpEd page “Around the Halls” that most readers turned to first for the gossip by ace reporter Eve Dropper. The dozens of other newspapers, both weekly and daily, that have disappeared, and either been forgotten or replaced with on line versions. But during their print lives, each, in their own style, impacted the public in more ways than one.
The lack of newspapers has pretty well done away with the news boy, the kid who made a few bucks a month getting on his bike and tossing papers on lawns and porches in his own neighborhood, collecting weekly payments and often tips he never forgets, all the while learning the lessons only a news carrier could learn.
Shrewsbury’s Don Burden, the former Mayor, was a newspaper carrier in his youth in Connecticut and today can remember not only the names of many of his regular customers, but certainly all the lessons he learned from them. And many of the lessons he learned from these customers indicate just how important this business was for youngsters growing up.
Burden noted all the customers exposed me to a variety of people I probably would never have known otherwise; having a paper route taught all of us the importance of money and the power of money. It taught us the value of having a job. It taught us how to work and be dependable.”
And he even remembers so many of the names and personalities of the 40 to 50 customers he had on his route when he was not yet a teenager because of “the impact they made on me. They were living people all with a face and a personality.”
It is not surprising that the former Mayor captured many of these memories and life impacts in a memoir, “The Brightest Lights,” a charming compilation of stories about people and events that impacted the early life of the man who went on to be highly successful in the publishing business….why is that not a surprise?
A municipal and county leader in a variety of ways, a retired professional who still spends a lot of time in the library, and the president of the Shrewsbury Historical Society where he has led an eager group of volunteers in creating a local historical society that truly captures the importance and significance of local history but also highlights the people and places of Shrewsbury that are so significant today and in the future.
In the memoir, the seven-year-old Burden candidly admitted he wanted to know how to make money. He was hanging out at Gus Ambler’s store on Main Street in his home town when he eagerly accepted Gus’s offer to take some newspapers out to the corner and sell them.
It didn’t matter to him, if he indeed knew, that Gus just wanted to get rid of a pesky kid who liked his store; the enterprising young Burden saw it as a way to make some coin. Hence his introduction to the New Milford Times and collecting seven cents for everyone he sold.
He must have been good, because he went back a second and third time to get more papers. That’s when he got his first harsh lesson in the business world. Gus told him to leave, it was enough. Puzzled, Burden went home and asked his dad why he was told to quit when he was doing just what Gus wanted.
So, Father Burden introduced his young son to the supply and demand side of business. While young Don was doing an excellent job selling those papers, it meant those customers weren’t coming into Ambler’s Store any more. Which meant they weren’t picking up their cigars or post cards or magazines they bought at the same time. So the young entrepreneur what it was meant by his gain, Gus’s loss. That’s when Don took over his brother’s route and began delivering what ended up being three different newspapers along his customer route.
Burden said he enjoyed working with the other carriers, waiting for their supplies to arrive. But it was sheer business once the papers came and the boys had to count them out, roll them, secure them in the bags and baskets on their bikes and head off in their different directions to their assigned routes.
For Don, his stops included everything from the local gas station to the Getchell home where he had to be sure to toss the paper in a strategic spot so the wheelchair bound lady of the house could get it.
From there he went on to Joe’s Barber Shop where he’d often get a lollipop, then to another store to pick up a supply of the Bridgeport Post which he also delivered. After that was Mr. Barnhardt’s Hughie’s Restaurant where he had to get off his bike, walk up the steps and take aim so the paper would slide down the counter.
He loved the stop at the Ford Agency where Phil Worley would let him in to see the newest car models, soak in the aroma of the tires and even pet his pair of Golden Retrievers. There was the officious Mary Borden in the Connecticut State Highway officer who never smiled, nor had time to chat; Mrs Bailey on Housatonic Avenue where she had some younger children and took advantage of her news carrier’s older and more caring age to dash off for a visit with a neighbor leaving Don to watch the little ones.
There was the schoolteacher, Mrs. Shannon whom he never saw but who always left his pay on a window sill, Mr. Lyons on Main Street where he could leave the paper on the back seat of his car.
There was the convent atop the hill, steep, and difficult to access by bike, but where he would leave the paper on the second floor of the school by where the nuns lived. Don still remembers their starched habits, the religious sisters wearing the same attire winter and summer and where he would often get a candy bar. By the time he made his next stop, at the rectory where the priest lived, he said the priest’s housekeeper always knew in advance…a phone call from the convent….whether he had already gotten a candy bar. If so, there was none here for him, if not, perhaps a Popsicle.
But it was all the nuns who came out to help him one day when a wind blew all his newspapers way, scattering them across the school yard and down the hill. The habit wearing and coifed women helped retrieve them, then folded them and put them in his bag with a warning to “always be aware of the wind.”
There were stops as the school music teacher’s house where he had to was told not to distract the youngsters in their piano class and the Homestead Inn where he had a lot of customers and stories off famous folks who had stayed there over the years from Frederic March and Marilyn Monroe to British conductor Leopold Stokowski and guitarist Bob Margolin.
There was the black lab at the Keating house, his favorite teacher Mrs. Keeler, and the friendly Mrs. Burke who always said,, “Gee, it is good to see you. Are you having a good day? Thanks for the paper.” At Christmas, she also gave him a decorative package of a dozen life savers.
Not all stops were perfect, Burden laughs, but he charts their memories as part of life. Like the back door of the house where he tossed the paper he didn’t want to climb to the second-floor apartment. That’s because the house reeked of kerosene from a poorly vented stove, and the small was more offensive mixed with cigar and cigarette smoke. Besides, that family always was late in paying for their papers and did it in cash so foul smelling he even put it in a different pocket so as not to blend it with the rest of his money.
There was the house with the nasty alcoholic and the house with the Scotch terrier dogs who barked incessantly and hated the paper carrier.
Looking back on those delivery days, Don said he tired of it after a few years and ‘abandoned’ his business when the family moved from down town to their new home on Park Lane and turned his route over to the Lathrop twins. “I was done with it,” he recalls, “and now seeking new ways to make some pocket change.”
But every one of his adventures, every one of his customers was a “light turned on.” One of those lights was winning a trip to Washington by adding 35 new customers to his route for the Sunday edition of the Bridgeport Post.
When he cashed in on that reward and went to Washington by train with the other contest winners, he got to visit, among other places, the J. Edgar Hoover office where FBI Director Hoover greeted each of the boys with a handshake and arranged a signed picture of him with the Director himself. Then there was the group photo on the steps of the Capitol, with his Connecticut Senator Prescott Bush and the train ride back to Bridgeport, exhausted, broke and filled with memories.
“I don’t think today’s kids get these experiences on their phones and tablets,” a man happy with all his memories said.
Read Don’s Book on Shrewsbury
