Chapter One

Most stories begin with the arrival of something that doesn’t belong; something that upsets the status quo. For me, that something was the paperboy.

First of all, we don’t get a paper. Most of our neighbors don’t, either. And if they do, it arrives in a speeding van, just before dawn, with a phantom driver at the wheel. It does not arrive in the basket of a shiny red bike, at midmorning, with a cute boy at the handlebars. I’ll bet there hadn’t been a paperboy riding through the neighborhood in thirty years. Yet there he was, at 9:30 on a Sunday morning, capturing my attention; not belonging; upsetting my status quo.

So I’ll begin with him.

I was standing outside waiting to ride to church with my grandparents, the perpetually late John and Margaret Abel. They were still inside, probably because of a lost set of car keys, or a lost pair of glasses, but the possibilities were almost limitless.

As I waited, I slowly became aware of a sound—a rhythmic, soft, slapping sound. I turned and looked east down Blacksmith Road and, in the distance, I saw the thing that didn’t belong.

A paperboy.

He was heading my way in a slow, deliberate, criss-crossing pattern, maneuvering a bright red bike that I would soon learn was a 1955 Schwinn Racer. It had a big wire basket in front from which the boy pulled out newspapers and tossed them onto each lawn.

I stepped down to the edge of the driveway and focused in on his face, quickly realizing that I knew him. Douglas Zorn. He had gone to Jonas Salk Middle School a few years ahead of me.

That got me excited.

I am tall, like my mother. Unlike my mother, I’d rather not be, so I compressed my spine, and I waited for him.

By the time Douglas finally noticed me, I had managed a ‘What are you doing here?’ grin. He hurled one more paper onto a neighbor’s lawn and pulled to a stop in front of me. He was quite tall, so I relaxed.

Memory Lane will be released in 2010.