Holy neglected blog, Batman! As I am fond of saying, life really does get in the way. I just realized that I haven’t blogged since February. Yikes.
As everyone who knows me can attest, I can be a bit, well, nostalgic. I get paid to live in the past in my profession as a historian. That’s not to say I don’t have knowledge and appreciation for technology, especially online news delivery. I was a digital media director for more than 15 years. That being written, I have a story to share.
My late father read the newspaper religiously every day. He read it back-to-front, front-to-back, cover-to-cover, every damn day. The only things I think he skipped were the Jumble, the advice columns, the Bridge tutorials, and the crossword puzzle. My hometown of Rochester, N.Y., had a morning paper (Democrat & Chronicle) and an evening paper (Times-Union). My dad read at least one. I don’t recall which he subscribed to. You couldn’t get his attention, he wouldn’t play ball or help with my homework, until he finished reading the paper.
Perhaps it represents a connection with my dear departed dad, maybe I like the way the paper is organized or the feeling of newsprint between my fingertips, or maybe I just like the funny papers, but I have been getting a Sunday paper delivered to my house ever since we purchased it in 2008. (As I write this, I have asked Alexa for a selection of jazz. My father often listened to jazz records while he read the paper).
I have a Sunday ritual. I get up, make my way downstairs, plop down on the couch with a cup of coffee and argue with the wife over when to fire up CBS Sunday Morning from the DVR while she makes breakfast. After CBS Sunday Morning’s “Moment of Nature,” I open the front door and walk out to the driveway a la Ray Liotta in Goodfellas. I pick up the Sunday paper and survey all that I can survey. A sly grin usually curls my lips as I think about the suburbanite existence, the normality of Sunday morning in my neighborhood. The pull-cough-start of lawnmowers, birds chirping, the sun slowly warming the air, my bare feet cold and wet from the dew on the usually fresh cut grass.
I read the paper pretty much cover-to-cover, starting with the comics.
Earlier this year, regular delivery of the East Bay Times became spotty at best. Finally, at its worst, I got one paper in a five-week span. Now, I get the local town paper for free every Friday and it is pretty serviceable, but it doesn’t have a Sunday edition with the inserts and coverage that a bigger paper has. After numerous unresolved complaints and the requisite begging from the circulation department, I cancelled the subscription. Unsure what to do, I decided to wait and evaluate the other options in the area before starting a new subscription.
Before I could, my wife and mother-in-law ventured into San Francisco on a Saturday to pick up their race packets for Bay to Breakers. The whole family was supposed to go, but the weather was awful and I didn’t feel well. While at the expo, I got a message from my wife. The San Francisco Chronicle was having a subscription drive and was offering a deal. Daily digital plus a physical Sunday paper. The price was right and I said, “let’s do it.”
That was May 18.
Every Sunday since I have made my trek to the driveway only to be disappointed, disheartened even. What the hell do I have to do to get a freakin’ Sunday paper around here?!?! I finally gave up. My wife has been complaining for weeks and I had taken to holding the local town paper until Sunday to read it. Blah. Credits have been promised and I have been contemplating cancelling this subscription too. The daily e-mails are great, the digital edition of the paper is a marvel – it’s organized and reads just like the physical edition.
But it’s not the same.
This past Sunday, I had the occasion to go check the mail. Our mailbox is part of one of those community contraptions with eight other compartments and it’s across the street. My wife quipped, “I wonder if we got a paper.” I chuckled and mumbled to myself as I opened the front door and made that walk to the driveway. A walk I had made hundreds of times before. And what should my wondering eyes behold? Not one newspaper, but TWO copies of the San Francisco Chronicle for Sunday, July 21, 2019. One was in plastic wrap and the other was loose. I scooped them up in my arms and giggled and cackled all the way to the mailbox and back.
When I walked into the house with my arms full of mail and newsprint, I proclaimed, “YOU’LL NEVER GUESS WHAT WE GOT!” When I showed my 12-year-old, the incredulous look on his face spoke volumes and all he could do is put a finger to his temple and walk away.
Although my routine this week was tossed out the window by the time I got the paper(s), I read the Chronicle cover-to-cover reveling in my nostalgia and rubbing the newsprint between my fingers. I didn’t even bother to wash the transferred ink off my fingertips when I was done. I felt good, I felt right.
As I’ve gotten older, I just turned 50 recently, I have learned to appreciate small things, comfortable things, older things, pieces of my childhood, connections to bygone eras – a good glass of Scotch, jazz, reading a real book, the feel of a newspaper in my hands.
I bridge two worlds having been born in 1969, my breadth of pop culture knowledge spans six decades. So, I know analog and I know digital. I have a record player, a cassette deck, a DVD player, Smart TVs and several Alexa units. Since the age of 30, I have been a digital native. I love the Internet, I think it’s one of the greatest inventions of all-time. With some things, I’d never go back, but sometimes, modern technology can’t compare with the way things used to be.
Every so often you see one of those articles online about what kids today wouldn’t recognize – VCRs, VHS tapes, old video game cartridges, cassette tapes – I just hope newspapers don’t become one of those things. Who knows what I’ll find in the driveway this Sunday? There might be seven weeks of back issues or maybe this week’s snail races. I guess we’ll see, won’t we?
Get the Knaak 