The route went from Willowbrook Road to manor Road. It was one of those routes that the "new kid" got, comprised of every non-tipping and non-paying home that every other older kid did not want. So it was a house here and a house there. Not knowing its history I plied my trade each day, six days a week, cycling from the lower part to the higher, and if lucky collecting a nickle tip from most of my 109 customers. Rain, snow, ice, heat, each day down College Avenue to Willowbrook, and then house by house up again. That was my first sales route, and it contained many a non-payer.
The best days were late Spring when on a Saturday you rode from house to house, the windows were open for the first time letting in the warm Spring air and the Top 40 played from 9AM till noon, and each house somehow had that station on. I could deliver my 109 papers and almost have continuous radio coverage. This map above was my territory, it is where one learned how to sell, how to collect, and what the ups and downs of business were.
I do not see any paperboys today. None of the kids today push a bike loaded with papers from the bottom of the hill to the top, some two plus hours a day, and then have to worry about collecting enough to pay the Newspaper. You see you owed them whether you collected or not. The Staten Island Advance was a Simon Legree employer, the demanded payment and furthermore demanded that you had to service a customer whether they paid or not. Thus if you had a non-payer, well that was your problem and you had to find a way to collect.
I recall one house that never paid. I tried to terminate them but the Advance would not hear it. I finally found out they had died, I think in the in the very house, then the Advance let me cancel.
The map has many memories, street after street. Day after day. Interesting that after some sixty years I can still recall the details of the route. It is a shame that kids today do not get both the exercise and the experience.
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