Farewll to an era

In February, The Daily Journal, founded in 1911, started over as Volume I of “The Journal,” a biweekly publication. And paper delivery as it had been known, changed. This marks the end of an era.

A sign of the times, The Journal’s editions now go into homes and businesses via the postal service, making drivers and paper carriers part of the past.

Fuller, who holds a nursing degree, joined the newspaper’s Circulation Department in 1975-76 when motor routes for the local paper were increasing. As delivery routes expanded, more and more Borderlanders would receive The Daily Journal, placed in “tubes” at their residence, from the seat of a driver’s car.

Fuller’s 27-year delivery service to subscribers east of International Falls, also known as “the lake route,” began with 36 papers and ended on the Anchorage Road. When she retired in 2002, her paper count was in the 500s and she delivered all the way from the Freedom Station in town to the eastern end of the line at Sha~Sha Resort.

Her car count totaled six, she told The Journal, but those cars went through new brakes every six weeks. However, her husband Herb did the repeated brake jobs himself, she added.

“I was lucky, I had my own mechanic,” said Fuller, noting that her sturdiest car was a Ford Escort. It lasted six years on a job which required hundreds of repetitive starts and stops over a 15-mile journey, five days a week. One “lemon” she said, lasted only three months.

No matter the weather, sometimes tunneling through snow drifts and sometimes getting stuck, the paper was delivered without exception, Fuller said. And when she fell in Ranier and broke her arm, that didn’t stop her either.

She tells of a year when the newspaper’s annual special edition was so thick that both seats, the floor and the trunk of her car wouldn’t hold the whole route’s supply, so a second loading was necessary that day. “The springs were right on bottom,” she recalls. Delivering the hefty annual editions took a truck in one other year.

The 1988 fire that nearly destroyed The Daily Journal/North Star Publishing on Third Street didn’t falter production or delivery, Fuller said. Its main press badly damaged in the weekend fire, The Daily Journal still printed a 10-page Monday edition at the Fort Frances Times. Bundling was done across the street from the charred and sooty office, and the paper went out as usual.

But it’s remembering those readers who waited for her everyday that brings a wistfulness to Fuller’s voice. To those who received their daily paper with joyful anticipation; and for those to whom the delivery was a break in the day, a comfort and a chance for conversation — route drivers like Fuller delivered more than just the paper.

“The people were the best part of it,” she said. “And you did look forward to seeing certain people everyday. There was one lady — I brought the paper right to her door, because I was her security check. If she didn’t come (to the door) for a few days, I called law enforcement.”

Fuller said her scenic route, bountiful with bear, deer, wild turkey and fox, was another plus. “I loved the route,” she said. “It was beautiful to drive, four hours a day. It suited my lifestyle. I enjoyed the people, and I enjoyed time alone in the vehicle.”

As one who played an essential role in getting the paper to the people, Fuller said she and her husband understand that technology and the easy accessibility of information has affected the economy of newspapers. She noted that the effect that two papers a week has had on obituaries just emphasizes the importance of a community paper. The Journal currently posts obituaries on its website as soon as they are processed, and republishes them in the nearest printed edition.

“New technology has put information so quick at hand, and it’s just the way it is,” Fuller said. “But I still love the (tangible) paper to read. We need the local paper for local news.

“And we have the best paper. We miss the daily but we certainly understand.”

Don Clark

A pastor at Pleasant Hill Baptist Church in the Falls, Don Clark agrees it was the people to whom he delivered the newspaper which brought the best rewards.

Clark said he enjoyed being “the face and the connection” for The Daily Journal, explaining that he often felt like sort of an ambassador providing a rapport between the subscriber and the newspaper. Clark still installs newsstand copies for The Journal, as well as handles other newspapers.

His original career was in the U.S. Navy and Clark lived around the country before arriving in northern Minnesota in 1989. To help support himself and wife “Sam,” he had been delivering outside papers in this area. Clark, a friend of Fuller, became a substitute driver on her route as well as for Journal routes in Ericsburg and Littlefork. When Fuller retired in 2002, Clark took over the lake route.

“The thing that made me feel best was taking the paper in to people that were handicapped,” he said. “They were always so thankful.” For those who needed it, Clark left his car and put the paper in their hands. “Maybe talk a few minutes,” Clark said in his easygoing, southeastern drawl.

Clark’s route peaked at 533 different stops in the summertime, he said, and brought him cookies, cakes and family friendships as well as helped him know the community. He learned quickly to bring biscuits for the dogs in Ranier.

“After a while, I pretty much knew everybody,” he said matter of factly. “I got to know their routines, their lifestyle.” Clark said that retired people and others on fixed incomes seem to miss daily delivery the most, and many were generous to him at Christmas time.

As the newspaper era of Linotype, paste up, art books and even typewriters become just a whisper of yesteryear, today’s pressured newsrooms and ad departments have come to rely on email and electronic uploads, downloads and transfers.

And the rate at which technology is accelerating allows little relevance for analysis. Nonetheless, Clark voices a conundrum for many.

“I’ll never understand if newspapers wanted to stay in business, why they went online,” he said, simplifying an enigma which is still debated by the industry and the business world.

But the utilization of technology in the newspaper business was more insidious than it now seems, gradually upgrading the billing and production process until it encompassed its very availability electronically. Technology’s future is as certain as Ben Franklin’s proverbial death and taxes.

While technology has changed newspapers dramatically, Clark said that something which hasn’t changed is the good old-fashioned camaraderie of the circulation staff when they gather in the pressroom, waiting to add inserts and bundle newspapers which are hot off the press. He marveled at the adroitness of pressman Brian Tivey, once a paper boy for The Daily Journal, and Wendy Tivey Tammi in circulation, both longtime Journal employees. “You observe how efficient they are, and their adeptness and ability to do what they do.

“And Dana — she’s been a gem,” Clark observed about Dana Hartje, manager of the Circulation Department which faced enormous structural changes with the paper’s new schedule.

The rigors of his job’s repetitive reaching as well as the lifting had its physical hazards, said 68-year-old Clark, and may have soon curtailed his delivery work anyway. He remembers the late Evelyn Monson who enjoyed her Daily Journal role as the curmudgeonly motor route driver, and served as a carrier all the way into her 80s. Clark’s path also crossed with longtime motor carrier Les Thayer.

Following employment in the mill, Thayer oversaw several motor routes over about 14 years, one was Littlefork delivery which he really enjoyed. “They’re country folks,” he said, noting that Littlefork residents always had a wave and a smile for him, which he misses. Thayer resigned his route last year due to health issues.

Clark said he enjoys newspaper features that you can’t get online such as comic strips and puzzles to complete, because they “make us laugh and relax.” And in spite of dramatic changes in the industry, Clark says he thinks printed papers will be around into the future.

But, he says, the loss of the personal connections once provided with newspaper delivery is evident every time he hears, “We sure miss you comin’ around.”

Paper boys and girls

Since its early days and long after, The Daily Journal relied almost entirely on local boys and girls to deliver the paper around International Falls, Fort Frances and several neighboring communities. These were the days when kids not only delivered the papers, but also collected fees once a month.

Before it moved to Third Street where present-day Sears is located, The Daily Journal operated in a building adjacent to the old Rex Hotel on Third and Third in the Falls, where today’s Giovanni’s restaurant stands.

In 1938, orphaned Henry Haugland was a featured “newsboy” in a series which ran in The Daily Journal. In Haugland’s day, blue powder and melted lead were still part of the printing process. A veteran of two wars, who worked at the paper mill, Haugland lived a successful and civic life in the Falls. He is now 86.

In the feature, 14-year-old Haugland talks of his hobbies and dreams, and boasts of buying his own ice skates with his earnings as a local paper boy. Kids lined up in those days for a chance to earn their own money.

The feature also mentions newsboys Ellsworth Jorgenson and Donald Holler who were part of a large carrier staff that huddled outside at press time, waiting to head off with that day’s edition.

Robert O. Nyberg of St. Louis Park, who still summers on Rainy Lake, was born and raised in the Falls. He was also a newsboy for The Daily Journal.

Nyberg began his delivery duties at the age of 8 or 9 along Eighth and Ninth streets, he told The Journal, and continued until he was 15 or 16 after being given what he said was considered the best route — downtown. He also worked in the paper’s mail room.

In an exceptional photograph that he provided to The Journal, 13-year-old Nyberg is perched on his bike on D-Day, June 6, 1944, holding an “Extra” edition of The Daily Journal. “INVASION” is colossally printed across the front page, in perhaps the largest type this newspaper has ever used.

Nyberg went on to enjoy a 38-year career with Honeywell and retired 20 years ago. He remembers his role as paper boy fondly. “You earned money, and everything that went along with it,” he said.

Chris Dandeneau, who is looking forward to the Class of 1985 reunion this summer, was a Journal carrier from 1977-1984. He delivered on Eleventh Street to Fifteenth Street, and from Fifteenth Avenue to Twelfth Avenue.

Dandeneau remembers that the monthly subscription delivery rate, which carriers were still responsible for collecting at that time, was $2.35 per month. Perpetually, the desks of circulation managers through the years were stacked with the carriers’ zipped, cloth bags of money received from customers who in return, were given small, perforated “paid” tags.

“I purchased my first Schwin Varsity 10-speed bike from Riley’s Sporting Goods with the money I made delivering papers,” Dandeneau told The Journal, labeling his duration as a “good time.”

Fuller remembers delivering bundles to about 13 on-foot paper carriers who once delivered “up the lake,” which eventually dwindled to a single on-foot carrier, “a Gouin girl on Forest Point,” she said, before all deliveries went to motor routes.

Thousands of youngsters have served as newspaper carriers since 1911. And today, hundreds of people of almost every generation can still tell stories and pass on the memories from a bygone era. An era when kids got their very first jobs and felt valued for providing a service; and newsboys and girls saved up to buy things they otherwise would never have owned.

And from those stories, what they learned may be remembered — to be valued and delivered to future generations.