Survey delivers a dose of nostalgia

One morning eons ago I trudged into my cousin’s garage.

The fluorescent lamps hummed and flickered. The cold of the slick, cement floor stung my bare feet as I skirted past piles of laundry, dog kibble and small oil slicks.

My younger cousin always seemed to have money and he was as famous for his generosity at the candy store and arcade as he was for his braces and his disheveled hair.

My mother thought it was a good idea for me to see how he generated income, so there I stood while the rest of the family slept, watching him through bleary eyes as he folded newspapers and secured them with rubber bands.

Normally chatty, too chatty actually, he did this in silence, offering only a few words of direction when I squatted to help him tackle the stacks of newspapers he had to wrap and deliver.

Eventually we made our way into the cheek-biting morning beneath dimming street lights, he laden with rolled newspapers that he flung onto lawns and driveways, me trailing him on my other cousin’s bike in a sort of pre-teen job shadow.

I lasted two blocks or so before turning back for the comfort of a warm house and a bowl of cereal.

Delivering newspapers wasn’t for me and any point my mother was trying to impress upon me about gainful employment was lost.

I think of that morning any time I run into someone who tells me they used to deliver The Star-News and how much they loved it. Usually the retelling is done with an enthusiasm that was missing that one morning long ago.

I suppose nostalgia will do that to some.

Recently an internet based job-search company released the results of their survey revealing that “paperboy” was the number one most missed job in California.

They must not have surveyed my cousin or his mother. It turns out that more often than not it fell upon my aunt to wake up early and prepare the papers to be thrown from the car by my grouchy cousin as he slung them from the family car. At a family gathering they laughed as they recalled bickering about if it was OK to quit a job that a young boy impulsively signed up for thinking it would be easy money. But he did like the afternoons at the arcade spending his own money. He smiled. Nostalgia will do that.