This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

The headline on this blog arose in my mind when I read a story by Bob Greene in the Wall Street Journal as he chronicled his tenure as a paperboy many years ago.

So, my answer to the question in the headline, is “yes, I do.”

I was one – a paperboy, that is.

A question like this is sort of life, do you know what a phone booth is?  Many youngsters don’t these days, just like they have no idea what a paperboy was.

As a young boy, I remember delivering newspapers around my neighborhood in the early morning hours, before school.  I did so on my bicycle, trying to balance the papers in bags on handlebars as I rode around the streets in the pitch dark.

Tough stuff.

It was almost as tough to walk around in the evening trying to collect money for the papers.  Many people weren’t home on the first visit.

Of course, this was before the Internet.  So, there were only two ways for folks to get their newspapers – either to head to a store to buy them, or have them delivered.

For the latter, I was their guy.

Here are a few excerpts from Greene’s story, just to make sure you understand what it means to be “paperboy.”  It appeared under this headline:

When Boys, Not Phones, Delivered the News; Many homes took two papers, a morning and an evening one.

“I’m no stamp collector, but there is a 3-cent first class stamp, issued in 1952, that I keep in a frame on a bookshelf.  The Post Office Department authorized the stamp to honor what the nation considered an essential job.

“The rectangular stamp, light purple in color, depicts houses in a typical small town.  Against that backdrop is an illustration of a boy with a canvas bag slung over one shoulder.  The stamp’s inscription reads:  “In recognition of the important service rendered their communities and their nation by America’s newspaperboys.”

“I look at that stamp every time there is another news story about the declining circulation of print papers, even as digital circulation grows.  Newspaperboys (and girls) were a vital part of the American landscape in the decades before the Internet and cable news delivered up-to-the-second bulletins onto people’s screens.

“Today, print papers mostly are delivered by adults in cars.  But that purple stamp celebrated the era when the speediest way of getting news to front doors was a boy on a bike.”

Back in the day, in Portland, where I lived, there was an employee for the Oregonian newspaper whose job was to bring papers out to a small office in our neighborhood where we – the paperboys – would pick them up and deliver them.

On weekdays, I was able to carry all the papers on my route on my bike, often rolled up.  So, I was able to toss the paper on the front porch and, if I hit a screen, well, I just rode away fast.

Sundays were especially tough.  The Oregonian newspaper was so big I couldn’t carry all my papers on my bike, so the guy I worked for dropped off some papers at the halfway point, so I could continue.

How ingrained in the nation’s life was a paperboy or girl?

The writer, Greene, said one proud former newspaperboy — Dwight D. Eisenhower — issued a statement from the White House in 1954 honoring the carriers “not only because they serve our daily family needs, but because they symbolize so many cherished American ideals.”

When Eisenhower mentioned “daily family needs,” he wasn’t being hyperbolic.  In 1950, the penetration of American households by newspapers — a statistic measuring in how many homes a newspaper was read each day — was just above 120 per cent.

How could the number exceed 100 per cent?  Well, many homes subscribed to two papers — a morning and an evening one.

Greene ends his column this way:

“For some of us who love this business, there is still no sweeter sound than the solid thump of a rolled-up paper hitting the front stoop.  The future may be digital, but to that hardworking newspaperboy on the 3-cent stamp, with gratitude and respect across all the years:  Here’s to you.”

And, that means me!