Newspapers have beguiled me from an early age. The summer I smuggled a kitten home from day camp, even though I knew my mother was terrified of cats, I placed the gold and white kitty in a shoe box lined with newspaper and covered her with my camp T-shirt.
With the kitten happily hidden in my bedroom closet, I liked thinking about her snuggled up in the news, surely a safe place.
At the time, we had two newspapers a day, the Virginian Pilot in the morning and the Norfolk Ledger-Dispatch in the late afternoon. I would sit out on the concrete steps of our house, waiting for the early morning delivery, and again in the afternoon after school, I would wait for the later edition. I had a crush on the morning delivery boy, which was too bad because to this day I look a mess at 6:30 a.m.
He would artfully sling the paper from his bicycle to the top step where I was perched. I secretly hoped he did that because he liked me, but later learned he aimed all of his deliveries to the top steps, the better to earn big tips on Christmas. Or maybe it was just a time when doing a good job was second nature.
As soon as the paper hit the steps each day, its inky scent enticed me to open it and read the news.
My father had told all of his children the importance of not just glancing at the headlines. “You have to read the whole story to know what is happening,” he admonished us. Actually, I was the only one who took his advice; my brothers were more into sports than newspapers, but I have forgiven them.
The summer I graduated from high school, I was interviewed by our local paper for a story they were doing about the hopes and dreams of graduating seniors. At the time, I said I wanted to be a foreign correspondent for the paper. Some might say that I — a girl raised in Virginia — got my wish: California, where I wound up spending more than half my life, was indeed foreign.
On this rainy Sunday morning, as I walked out to get the newspaper, I was still feeling that little twinge of excitement waiting to read it.
No cute boy on a bike was about. No trying to catch the paper as it sailed through the air toward me. I walked down the front porch steps, across my little courtyard and gopher hole-filled front yard to the driveway where I found my Sunday paper protected in plastic from the rain. After all these years, I still scoop it up with anticipation.
Email patriciabunin@sbcglobal.net. Follow her at Patriciabunin.com.