the paper trail

      At around 3 o’clock in the morning on a sultry summer night in the late 1970s, I was preparing to fill up the newspaper rack in the small town of Dawson, Texas, when I heard the sound of rusty clanking coming down the main street. I looked up and saw a battered car with only one headlight draw up and park next to me, and stood there waiting as the window slowly rolled down.

      Every family has its own lore. Uppermost in the Collins family lore is “The Paper Route.”

      When my father retired from his 20-year Air Force career, we moved to the small Texas town of Corsicana. In an effort to bring in more cash, we took on a rural newspaper delivery route for the Dallas Morning News.

      The route included about 100 subscribers and four paper racks and covered about 60 miles and four small towns, plus numerous individual drops. My siblings and parents and I divvied up the delivery days so no one had to be constantly sleep-deprived. A truck would deliver the bundles of newspapers between midnight and 3 a.m., and we would pick them up and start the route, rolling the papers either in plastic bags or with rubber bands.

      The route might start out with: “What’s the chance of rain tonight?”

      “About 50 percent.”

      “Well, let’s bag 50 of them, then.”

      I’m here to tell you that the strangest things happen in the wee hours out in the deserted nighttime wasteland of East Texas. For that and other reasons, the paper route was extremely popular among my friends, and they begged to ride along. There was the thrill of being up at that late hour, the curiosity about what weird things might occur, and sometimes, if my girlfriend was along, the excitement of a brief stop at Navarro Mills lake for some necking.

      Strange things indeed. I crested a hill one night and came right up on the ass of a horse trotting single-mindedly down the two-lane highway ahead of me. Cows on the road were not even a novelty after a while. And I accidentally rolled a possum under my car once, only to look in the rearview mirror and see it right itself and scurry off into the brush.

      Sleepiness was a constant and unwanted companion, especially if no friends were aboard. In the long stretches between towns, I often nodded off, only to jerk awake seconds before a catastrophic discontinuation of forward momentum. Or I would half-hallucinate in my fatigue and see monsters rising from behind the hills before splashing some water on my face to shake it off. Luckily, I was wide awake the time an 18-wheeler coming my way crossed the centerline, the driver waking up just in time to avoid a life-altering (to say the least) collision.

      One dark night my mother and I drove one wheel into a muddy culvert in the town of Frost. Stuck solid, we puzzled whether we should wake someone up and ask for help (the risk of getting shot by a frightened homeowner was a bit lower back then). Being ever resourceful, however, and it being a Sunday morning with its thick bundles of Sunday inserts, we jacked up the car until the wheel was free of the mud, stuffed a couple of bundles under it, and drove clear. Naturally, the racks ended up being stocked a little less fully that night.

      And then there was the night I was starting my cruise down Highway 22 and spied two hitchhikers thumbing for a ride. These were no ordinary hitchhikers. Not because of the early hour, but because they were a young girl of about 10 and a young boy of about 7.

      I stopped and asked where they were headed. Hillsboro, they said, about 40 miles away. They had snuck out and were running away from the local orphanage, heading for God-knows-what or -whom in the next big town over. I told them to hop in, I would take them as far as Frost if they would help me roll newspapers on the way.

      The boy, Willie, quickly fell asleep in the back seat. I chatted with the girl, whose name I have forgotten, asking her about her grievances with the orphanage, where they were headed, and if they had family there. Her story was one of general dissatisfaction with the orphanage situation, and thankfully not one of abuse.

      I began talking with her about Willie, and whether she felt it was safe for them to continue after I dropped them off—or whether it might not be better for me to take them back to the orphanage after the newspapers were delivered. They might be able to sneak back in, with no one the wiser. By the time we reached the Frost turnoff, she agreed it was better to go back.

      The rest of the route was uneventful, and when I pulled up outside the orphanage, they scampered out and up to a lower-floor window. They were inside in seconds. I discovered later at school that they managed it all without being detected.

      And that wasn’t even the strangest thing that happened on the paper route, which brings me back to that car clanking down the main street.

      The night watchman for the town of Dawson had been the victim of an (as far as I know still) unsolved murder some time back. He was an elderly man I had always enjoyed chatting with for a break in the monotony of the midnight ride. But he was gone now and the street was empty and quiet except for the clanking wreck beside me.

      The window rolled down slowly, and I heard the voice of a young man call out to me.

      “Excuse me, sir?”

      (One 18-year-old being called “sir” by someone much the same age is not a strange thing in rural Texas.)

      “How can I help?”

      “Do you know a mechanic around here who could help me?”

      “Nope, and there’s not likely to be anyone at all until later this morning. What’s the problem?”

      “Well, I was out drinkin’ and ridin’ and went off the road and through a fence down the way. I need to get my car fixed up.”

      I told him he might as well wait, as it would likely take a few days to fix everything, so far as I could see.

      “Cain’t,” he said. “I need it all done by tomorrow. You see sir, the problem is that this is my daddy’s new car.”