The BackWoods Drifter

It is impossible to look into my past and not see the time served as the town paper boy. The town in those days was Naoma, WV and it amounted to three country stores, a post office, a beer joint, and a gas station all within rock throwing distance of each other. To say Naoma was a one horse town would be overstating it a little. By the time you got on the horse on one side of town, you’d be getting back off on the other. Although the town isn’t very big, the paper route was huge. At least it was to me. The route consisted of somewhere in the neighborhood of 130 houses in the town of Naoma and parts of two adjoining hollows - Peachtree and Horse Creek.

I started in the paper delivering business with my brother. I love him to death but we used to fight like cats and dogs. For the first two years of delivering papers it seemed like he had me mad all the time. He is a couple years older than I am and now probably about 120lbs heavier and near a foot taller - but I can still take him. At any rate, two years into the route my brother went to the Army. I know we fought a lot but I sure missed him out delivering the newspaper.

Not long after taking on full responsibility of delivering the people their morning news I came to realize the positive side of being in this business alone and the negative - I now had twice as much money to spend and twice the work to earn it. I don’t care who you are, if your paycheck doubles, you are a happy camper. I didn’t mind the extra workload because it just kept me out longer and even then - I had a thinkin’ problem. So I started missing my brother less and spent my mornings delivering papers with two canine friends and thinking the whole time of things to spend my new found fortune on.

I have to tell you about Blackie and Brownie my canine friends. These dogs basically saved my paper route. I was up every morning at 4 o’clock and at my papers by 4:30. I say at my papers because I lived in Peachtree and the bundle of papers was delivered to Naoma. Taking shortcuts, it was about a mile from the house. Not long after my brother leaves for the Army I go to the papers one morning and there is a jet black Labrador Retriever and a brown Norwegian mix laying right at the papers. They lay right there and watch me roll the papers getting them ready for delivery. I talked to the dogs the whole time. I called them the simplest names I could come up with because I didn’t know who the dogs belong to but I was sure they had real names. So I just called them Blackie and Brownie.

For the next year or so those dogs were waiting by the papers every morning ready to follow me through the early morning neighborhoods. I was grateful for their company more times than you could imagine. They were always waiting for me and they always disappeared shortly before I got home. I never did know who the dogs belong to because never once did they give an indication of being home. They definitely had a home because they were simply beautiful dogs.

Now let’s get back to the money part, I was rolling in it. I could play pinball or space invaders and eat candy at Glen Dale’s store until I was sick and my fingers were about to fall off. After a bit of spending with reckless abandon, I got a little wiser and bought something with longer lasting benefits, or so I thought. I bought a new ten speed bike. What I didn’t take into consideration was the fact they weren’t really designed for off road use and I lived off road. That bike stayed new for about a month after which it was held together by a hope and a prayer.

Lesson learned from the bike purchase, my next big purchase was a used go cart. This thing had chrome wheels, flames down the side, and would be nothing but a blur going by. Or I should say this thing was covered in oil, was likely to be on fire, and was powered by a 3hp tiller motor. I would work on it for a solid week, spending all my money, just to have a few hours of fun on a weekend - which usually ended with me pushing the go cart back home and setting it up for the next weeks work. I spent a lot of mornings with two dogs delivering papers and wondering how I could get the chain to stay on once and for all or how to get those damn brakes to work. Being able to keep it running would have been nice as well.

I delivered papers starting with my brother while I was in Jr. High and continued by myself nearly all through high school. On school mornings I was up just like any other time delivering papers before I went to school. Mondays were the best because the papers were light and I could carry the whole route in one go. Which usually meant I got to go home and sleep a little before school. Sunday was the worst. The papers were always heavy and I had to make a couple of return trips to where the papers were delivered to me. All through the week I could deliver my route and be home before the sun came up. Not on Sunday, I was never home before it got daylight.

With my paper route, I was like the postman. It didn’t matter the weather, 7 days a week 365 days a year - I delivered the newspaper. Thinking back I believe my favorite time of the year was in the winter. Sometimes I would go out the door and find myself in new fallen snow up to my knees. I loved those times because everything appeared clean and new and even mysterious in the pre-dawn light. Myself and my canine friends were the first to break the surface of the new snow on many mornings.

My service as the paper boy also came to an end with a trip to the Army shortly to follow. But that is a story for another day. I can say this, another thing I thought about on those early morning walks, and that was finding a way to leave these hollows. That is where the Army came in to play. Now I spend all of my time away from the hollows anxious to return. Funny how that works.