You Phone but I don’t iPhone

I bet that if you are under 30, you do not have the newspaper delivered to your place of residence unless you still live with your mommy. Nor do you go to a drug store or supermarket to buy the paper. If you want to read what is going on, you pull out your iphone or blackberry and read it online. Or, you sit at your computer at work or home, go on the internet and surf news sites.

Now, tell me that I am wrong. Of course, you could be old-fashioned and actually read a hardcopy of your favorite newspaper. As for me, the old fuddy duddy- I no longer subscribe to a paper or even buy one at a store. The only time I pick one up is when I go to my parent’s house or a friend’s. Otherwise, I get my news fix by going to the least objectionable website that gives me the news, sports, whatever.

What do I mean by “least objectonable”? I’m not talking editorial content and persuasion, but how long it takes my browser and internet connection to bring up the site and click into the information. I have no patience for wading through screens that take awhile to load with a whole bunch of ads. Nor do I want to wade through tens and even hundreds of comments that are most likely spam and not relevant to the purpose of the article just read.

Back in the 1950’s and 60’s, there was no internet and like everyone else, I had to wait to get a hold of a newspaper to see a boxscore of a sports event, or even the latest installment of a comic strip. I’d go to a corner newsstand which was a wooden shack. The city of Chicago permitted these and licensed them out. My mother would sometimes send me to go get the paper and I would take a slow walk back home, sure to read the entire sports section. Otherwise, I would not get to see the paper so quickly as I was a low man in the pecking order.

The newsstand owner was protective of his investment and probably the payoff he had to give to city officials to protect his “cash” business. His stand stood just outside a drug store at the corner of Central and Madison in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago. The drug store was allowed to sell newspapers only when his stand was closed up for the day.
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