ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 15, 1996 TAG: 9612160076
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: PORTLAND, MAINE
SOURCE: SARA RIMER THE NEW YORK TIMES
THE PORTLAND PRESS HERALD of Maine has decided to switch over to older carriers who can drive and throw the paper from their cars. Many Mainers feel keenly the loss of personal contact with their deliverer.
Making his rounds in the darkness, Eric Anderson, 17, walked up the steps of the Harringtons' house on Bancroft Street and placed the morning paper in the mailbox.
Eric's dog, Molly, raced joyously to the side door, where the previous morning's offering of veal had been replaced by corned beef.
Greeting Eric and Molly, Alfred Harrington retrieved the paper, The Portland Press Herald, and settled into his blue armchair to read it, cover to cover. It was 5:45 a.m.
This is how morning begins in the Rosemont neighborhood in Portland. In rain, in snow, even in blizzards, unless the delivery trucks are late, the paper is always in the same place, at the same time. It is always dry. The reason is Eric Anderson.
``Never, ever, never in six years have I seen Eric throw the paper,'' said Harrington's wife, Irene. None of Eric's 46 customers has ever known him to throw the paper. He places it in the mailbox or inside the front door, side door or back door, wherever the customer requests it. At Dee Saintcross' house, on Colonial Road, he leaves the paper at the edge of the porch, far enough from the door so as not to alert Rascal, a beagle whose early morning barking is not appreciated.
But now, after six years, Eric, whose mother and grandfather delivered the paper before him, is about to be forced to give up his job. So are his sister, Catherine, 11; his brother Corey, 15; his friend Noah Rosenberg, 17, and many other young people.
Following the lead of big-city dailies across the country, Portland Newspapers, which publishes The Portland Press Herald, a daily with a circulation of 75,000, and The Maine Sunday Telegram, have begun replacing carriers younger than 18 with adults, many of whom deliver the paper more speedily, by heaving it from their cars.
Like their counterparts across the country, executives at Portland Newspapers say that it has become difficult to find young carriers and that adults with cars can deliver the papers earlier and more efficiently.
``Life changes as we go on,'' said Angus Twombly, vice president for marketing for Portland Newspapers, ``and this is one of the ways that it's changed.''
It is the loss of yet another opportunity for personal contact in American life, along with the disappearance of telephone operators, bank tellers and door-to-door salesmen. This simple ritual, a boy delivering a paper, connects the Harringtons and other newspaper readers in the neighborhood - Fred Powers, Robin Lambert, Susan Pettingill, John Conley and Evelyn Kumiszca - to Eric. ``I've watched him grow up,'' said Lambert, 46, who scans the headlines while he is shaving.
``I think it's nice to have someone bring the paper whom you know,'' said Kumiszca, who has been getting the paper since 1941 from a long line of boys.
After 35 years as subscribers, the Harringtons have already notified The Press Herald that Eric's last day, sometime about the first of the year, will be theirs as well.
``I don't like the idea that they're cutting out these kids' jobs,'' said Harrington, who is 68 and retired from his sales job at Andersen Windows. ``I'll get the news off CNN.''
With his sister handling the Sunday papers, Eric makes about $30 a week, and an additional $5 in tips. He has used the money to buy skis, ice skates, a used mountain bike and hiking boots. He also pitched in to help buy the family computer. Eric, whose father is a sales representative for an auto parts company, also mows lawns and rakes leaves, but delivering papers is one of the few steady jobs that he can do before school.
He does not know what he will do to make up the lost money.
Six nights a week, he is in bed by 9:30, waking at 5 a.m. ``There's many days when I say, `Why am I doing this?''' he said. He does it anyway.
Eric knows Lambert and other newspaper readers are counting on him. ``Last year, we had 155 inches of snow in Maine,'' Lambert said. ``In March, it snowed every single day. He was there every morning, plunging through the snow, just like I did, just like all paperboys.''
Lambert delivered The Kennebec Journal as a boy in Farmingdale, Maine. ``I had about 150 customers,'' he said. ``Later, I ran for the state legislature, and they all voted for me.''
This fall, Portland Newspapers stopped distributing bundles of papers to carriers' homes for delivery and instead established six regional depots. The carriers pick up the papers at the depots. They must be 18 or older to gain entry to the depots.
Eric has been able to hold onto his job temporarily because the parents of his friend Noah are picking up the papers for both of them. But they are going to stop helping out sometime after Jan.1.
The change made it almost impossible for young carriers to keep their jobs. While there were 500 young carriers two years ago, today there are 150 out of a total of 700 carriers, Twombly said.
If newspaper executives say one of the reasons they are phasing out young carriers is that it is difficult to find them, then Eric says the new strategy, which makes it even harder, ``doesn't make sense.''
Kumiszca said that in 55 years, she had had only one complaint about a paperboy. ``It was in the late '50s,'' she said. ``He was kind of arrogant. I called the paper to complain, and they said, `Why don't you call his mother?' I did, and after that he was a perfect gentleman.''
LENGTH: Long : 101 linesby CNB