Memories of a paperboy

Memories of a paperboy

Bob Stewart could possibly be Levin’s oldest surviving paperboy – his recollections are timely as Te Takeretanga o Kura-hau-pō prepares to stage an exhibition showing the history of newspapers in Horowhenua.

Bob, 92, was raised in Piopio, but moved to Levin at the beginning of the Second World War “when Japan was getting close”.

It wasn’t long before he had his first job, delivering The Evening Post, at age 12. He’d tried to get a paper run years earlier but was always told “come back when you’re a bit older”. 

Bob would wait at the Weraroa station for the 4.50pm train from Wellington and put his stack of papers in an old sugar bag adapted and sewn to fit his pushbike. His first stop was a stationery shop in town and he would “wait for Mr McCleene to count them” before heading north along Bartholomew Road, taking in MacArthur Street and Fairfield Road.

“You’d throw them out. Mr Parsons on Macarthur Street would leave you an apple,” he says.  “I can’t remember what you were paid, but I do remember my mate had a Dominion run in the morning and he was getting 15 bob a week.”

Bob then got another run. After attending Levin School he would deliver the Levin Chronicle in the afternoon, which in those days was printed in Levin.

“That meant I couldn’t go swimming after school,” he says.

He would watch the pages beings pieced together on a table and would help fold them.

“You’d fold them in half and slide your hand over to crease it. You’d get ink all over your hands.”

He picked up another run that took him Hokio Beach Road, Bruce Road, Buller Road area. All up the run would take about two hours.

“What got me though is the bar on my bike broke one day. I was almost home. It cost me a week’s wages to have it welded together again,” he says.

Every financial quarter the paper boys would pick up subscription payments and write out receipts. Bob remembers dropping some papers to US soldiers who were camping at Prouse Bush.

“They would play cards that had pictures of aeroplanes on them. One of them said “you got a sister?” and he was told to shut up. He gave me a pound note to go to the shop and get a fizzy drink and a sally lun and when I got back he said keep the change. It was a week’s wages.”

Bob stopped his paper run when he was 15 after he left school to work at the abattoir in Levin, and as was so often the case, he passed it on to his younger brother, Graeme.

He says he still enjoys reading the local paper delivered direct to his letterbox each week.