My friend Jim Clanton had an idea for what a reader might do with his son's Spokane Daily Chronicle delivery bag recently found in his garage. (The son doesn't want it.)

"Gordon Budke should donate the Chronicle delivery bag to the MAC. In a few years, when home delivery of newspapers is but a distant memory, it can be one of several artifacts in an exhibit describing a time, long ago, when young men, boys really, would ride through the neighborhoods of America, alone, in the dark, on cold, wet mornings (well, afternoons for the Chronicle) on their bicycles (or Cushman Eagles if they were successful), carefully throwing the news of the day onto the porches of America. They were the 'Newsies' of the 1950s and 1960s,

"Other artifacts might be a stack of unfolded papers left on the curb by the delivery truck, a carefully folded newspaper, shaped aerodynamically to allow a proper throw, a fat tired Schwinn bike with a basket, a model of a porch with a paper perfectly placed in front of the door and a receipt book for documenting the collection of the subscription fee.

"The exhibit could explain this practice began to wane in the 1970s as society began to consider this activity too dangerous for kids, so delivery was relegated to adults in cars earning a real living from the delivery of the paper. Finally with the advent of online media, the need to spend time and energy delivering outdated content no longer existed and the whole concept faded away.

"Gee, as a 50 year subscriber, I have just made myself melancholy."        

 

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