By Paul Honda
hrcFantasyLeague@aol.com
Monday, Sept. 18, 2006

There's something completely unique about working, writing for a newspaper. It has less to do with today and a lot to do with memories.

As a kid, just about the only real quiet time I spent my mom (and little brother) was when the newspaper arrived. We'd read the Star-Bulletin for long stretches. I grabbed the sports section. Mom read everything else. I don't remember what my brother read, but he eventually took to sports, too.

In time, my connection to the newspaper went beyond PCL Standings with the Hawaii Islanders' win-loss lie in bold, 14-point Times Roman type. (I'm guessing, and it seemed that huge back then before 8-point agate became the rule for standings.) Beyond the Jim Easterwood columns and Terry Luke photographs or even Corky Natividad's culturally-flavored political cartoons, my relationship to deadwood media extended when I was 13. As an eighth-grader, I began working a newspaper route in Mo'ili'ili, on the mauka side of Date and Kapiolani, where Terrace Towers and the adjacent walk-up apartment buildings and houses are. Life became extremely busy for me.

Back then, after folding and delivering the daily edition of the Star-Bulletin, I headed straight to practice, rode back to my route and started the bill collection. It was door-to-door, a meticulous, time-consuming task that was the norm. Rarely did I get tips, but folks were very nice, by and large. I spent my few moments of freedom playing with cats in the neighborhood.

It wasn't a lifestyle conducive to good grades. Often, I'd return home at 8 p.m., worn out and ready to hit the sack. But the route provided me with spending money, something my mom couldn't do since we barely got by to begin with. I didn't have to accept lunch tokens at Washington Intermediate any more, which was a big deal to me. I always felt small when I picked up those tokens and used them for lunch. Hated it. Having the change to buy my own lunch was gratifying.

So I delivered the paper for a year. Mr. Wong was always on the move, always encouraging as the district manager who brought us kids those newspapers. For a big guy, he was always quick, always working up a sweat, and I wondered how many people would like that kind of a job, out in the sun, hands always covered by news ink, hoisting large packs of newspapers. His metal clipper was always handy. The bundles were held together by metal wires in those days. (When they switched to plastic, me and a pal who also delivered papers used to light one end of the strip with a flame, and it would drip like hot wax. We'd flick those balls of flame at each other mostly on those early Sunday morning deliveries while it was still dark out.)

Those Sunday mornings were killer. At 13, getting up at 4 a.m. was just insanely uncomfortable. But I did it, no complaints, for the entire year. The thing about delivering papers is, you get used to working every single day. There's no holiday for a carrier.

So the year passed, and I realized that I was missing out on a lot of things. I decided to stop. I had my life back again, for richer or poorer (actually, much poorer), but I realized that I didn't really need much spending money to be happy. I had my friends, my sports, my free time to practice on my own, to be with my brother, to hang out at the park. That paper route taught me a lot, of course. My connection with the Star-Bulletin never stopped, even when I was away on the Big Island for eight years, working at a small newspaper (West Hawaii Today). In between, during my college years, I did football stats for a season, even had a summer stint as a gofer. (The latter required a 6 a.m. start time, three days a week. Aaauugh.)

That's why, when I began writing for the Star-Bulletin in 2003 on a stringer basis (paid by the story), it was like reuniting with an eighth-grade girlfriend. Well, sorta like. She was still nice, fun and easy on the eyes. And when the newspaper hired me in '04 to work full-time, well, that felt like we were serious about each other. It was a nice feeling. It's been nice ever since. She's good to me. I've done my best for her. It's never been about money. It's been about dedication, every single day, even when there is fatigue or a list of things to do with family. The intangibles keep me going every day, not the paycheck, though I can honestly say that without money, I can't eat, and if I don't eat, well ... I perish.

She's been very good to me, more than anywhere else I've worked. I can't say I know the future. I do know that things happen for a reason, and most of the time, I don't quite get that part. God doesn't send me e-mails explaining this and that. So I move along, keeping going forward and count my blessings. It's been a very good three years since I began stringing stories, and the job gave me hope after I left a discouraging situation at my previous workplace.

How do I say thank you to an icon of my youth? I'm not sure, so I just keep trying my best.

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