Why Did My Paper Route Customer Kill Himself?

 

This really happened. I don’t remember the details. The newspaper bundle(s) for my Atlanta Journal paper route were dropped off at the corner of Fraser and Manget Streets, near a little oak tree. There, under the tree I would put inserts or supplements into the papers and whatever else. I had several friends who came by and had a social time with me while I worked.

Across the corner were a row of apartment houses, 4 apartments per building – a row of apartments going south down Manget Street, and on both sides going east of Fraser Street.

We were about 14 and 15 year old. At the corner apartment building there was a lady with two or three kids. A female friend or cousin visited her often and sometimes they would walk by and talk to us on the corner. I think they were flirting. I knew the girl that lived there was married, I have seen her husband working on his car or whatever else. I knew their name because they took the paper, but it was hard to catch them with any money to pay their bill.

My Daddy was Chief of the Marietta Police at the time. On Sunday mornings he would help me do my route. The papers were bigger and harder to handle on Sunday mornings.

One day my Daddy told me that the husband of the lady I was talking about was found out in the woods dead. He had shot himself. He said his skin had turned black, I think by rotting. I don’t know if he knew his wife was flirting around or they had money problems. Either way I had to eat what he owed the Atlanta Journal. You see, the Atlanta Newspaper Company sold me the daily papers and I turned and sold it to the consumer. I was the middle man, I mean, boy.