The Newspaper
I’m not much of a reader. I never have been. Joy and most of
our children are avid readers. I think that I just learned to read too late in
my life. For years I delivered the paper in Boulder City for the Deseret
News and for the Las Vegas Review Journal.
My little brother delivered some papers for the Review Journal in
McKeeversville, and I remember him reading the paper before he left to make the
deliveries. Sometimes one of our parents would have to come out and tell him to
hurry up and get the papers ready to deliver. In later life, our own sons who
delivered newspapers would sit and read as they folded the papers and we would
need to tell them to hurry up and get the papers ready. When they got home, they
could read the paper. I sometimes suspected that as some of them got out of
sight, they sat down and read some more. As I got older and learned to read, I
would read part of the paper after I had made deliveries.
Years later when I was teaching at Orem High School my daughter Anna
answered a phone call from one of the assistant principals who was asking to
speak to me. He, of course, asked for Carl, which is my name, but one of our
sons is also Carl. She told him that Carl wasn’t home, he was still delivering his
newspapers. That caused a little bit of laughter at school. He said that he
wasn’t aware that I had to deliver papers to make ends meet. I explained to him
that I went by Jim at home. I do remember taking Carl and Mark on Sundays and
on days with snow. My own father had offered to take me to deliver papers whenever it snowed. It never snowed in Boulder City, Nevada.
Since our early marriage, we have taken the paper and I read
it each day. It has become a daily event in my life. I still don’t read a lot,
other than the paper. I still have trouble reading for pleasure, but it is
somewhat better now. Scriptures are something that I should read daily, but I
have a hard time doing that. I don’t sit down with a book for enjoyment. It is
just not me.
At work, I would need to read some of the reports, and I have
written some articles that have required some reading research, but that is
just it, it has to be required.
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Carl J Stubbs reading Deseret News |
I have helped at the elementary school in the reading
program to help students learn to read. I have felt bad for some of them who
couldn’t read. I know the problems they will face. I have been able to help
some to read better. It was an enjoyable time for me to listen to the students
read and know that they were doing better.
I still take the paper and probably will until I die. I
threaten to quit sometimes when the paper is wet or late or just not exactly to
my liking. Mostly the paper is on time and dry, in a plastic bag ready for my
perusal. I appreciate it when my paper is just where I expect it to be, when I
expect it. Most usually it is. I read the news and the comics. I seldom read
the editorials or sports unless it is about BYU or Orem High. Such is my life
with the newspaper that now costs two hundred sixty dollars a year plus tip. I
think it is still worth it to me and sometimes to Joy. This, by the way, has just
been an editorial about the newspaper.
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