OPINION —
I miss the newspaper. Before the internet. I’m talking physical newspapers. The kind you unfold.
I miss the morning routine of it all. Walk to the end of the driveway, barefoot, pre-sunrise. Messy hair. Morning breath. Unsheath the newsprint from its plastic. Soy-based ink on your fingers. That low-grade, wood-pulpy newsprint smell.
Also, I miss the design of a newspaper. A newspaper is a work of organizational art. The broadsheet layout, headlines, dropheads, bylines, datelines, section numbers, and… (Continued on A3).
I miss shaking open the paper with a grand gesture, organizing each section on my table, reading pages in a specific order: Funnies first. Sports next. Then, senseless acts of politics.
I miss the corny car-dealership ads. And the ultra-serious advice columns, with headlines like: “Help, my daughter says I wear ‘granny panties,’ what should I do?”
I miss the Far Side.
I miss low-quality photography, op-ed columns written by the extremely self-righteous, crossword puzzles, the classified section, and the “errata” section—I doubt people even know what that is anymore.
I used to deliver newspapers with my mother. Our lives revolved around newspapers. We have hurled—seriously—tens of thousands of papers in our lifetimes.
We serviced the majority of the continental United States in Mama’s little Nissan Altima with a heater that smelled like recently produced cat poop.
At two in the morning, sitting in her front seat, we rolled each copy into a giant enchilada, shoving each paper into a plastic wrapper, while drinking enough coffee to concern a cardiologist.
We delivered to expansive neighborhoods, subdivisions, business districts, apartment complexes, 2000-story beach condos, newspaper machines, hotels, you name it.
But do you know what my favorite part was?
My favorite part of the delivery process came toward the end of our shift. It would be sunrise. Old folks would be standing in driveways, awaiting delivery. The newspaper was THAT important to them.
Mister Oleson stood at his mailbox while his Shih Tzu, Buddha, sniffed each blade of grass before ceremoniously peeing on it.
Mrs. Reynolds, my old Sunday school teacher, waited at the end of her driveway, wearing a mumu, hair in rollers, arms crossed, angrily tapping her foot, scowling, and just generally scaring the crap out of anyone within eyeshot.
And there was this deep feeling, even at my young age, that what we were doing mattered. Delivering the paper mattered.
Because the newspaper was essential to my people. It sort of made us a community. It kept us all on the same page, so to speak.
After all, EVERYONE read the paper. And I think that’s what I liked about it most. People weren’t as divided as they are today.
It didn’t matter if you were Catholic or Protestant. Democrat or Republican. Black, white, brown, or otherwise. University of Alabama fan, or the other kind. Truck-stop waitress or corporate CEO. Steelworker or financial advisor. Gated community resident or trailer trash, like me. Male or female. Old or young. Everyone read the paper. It was OUR newspaper. We all owned a piece of it. Because, hey, we were all in this together.
Sure, we disagreed about what was in our paper. Absolutely, we didn’t always feel warm and fuzzy toward each other. We were vicious opponents sometimes. But you know what? We all did the same crossword puzzles. We all read the same TV-guide schedules. We all clipped the same coupons.
The internet can never replace that for me.
Sean Dietrich is a humorist and stand-up storyteller known for his commentary on life in the American South. His column appears weekly in newspapers throughout the U.S. He has authored 18 books and makes appearances on the Grand Ole Opry.
