READING THE PAPER

I read a daily paper until several years ago.  I'd always lived in a house where THE MEMPHIS COMMERCIAL APPEAL hit the lawn while the dew was still on the grass, and the plop of the PRESS SCIMITAR landed on the doorstep about four.   Breakfast rustlings whilst the bacon fried, the scent of the fresh-opened newsprint as much a part of that warm kitchen as the stove.   Snippets broadcast by Daddy as he sat with his glasses on his nose, seeing if the world was still out there.

The COMMERCIAL APPEAL was, and is, the Memphis mainstay in the news area:

And the afternoon PRESS---a little different, somehow, like the backdoor neighbor, as opposed to a lady in a hat come-a'calling.  The PRESS had odd comics and lots of puzzles and a homey feel to it.   It was the one folks settled in with in that magical hour when chores were done, and it wasn't quite time to start supper yet.

We even “took the GRIT” from a succession of grimy little boys on bicycles on Saturday afternoons---now THAT was an interesting paper. 

If you could get past all the black-and-white drab of the front pages, the rest was a treasure-trove of puzzles and comics and countless pages of stuff-to-send-away-for and business opportunities in Rosebud Salve

and  all sorts of noisemakers, magic tricks, x-ray glasses, and fool-your-friends items for the younger set.

So, when we arrived here twenty years ago, I chose the afternoon edition, liking the nice man who threw the paper, and even came collecting, just like the hometown carriers.  It was called the NEWS---a quiet little informative, interesting paper, as opposed to THE STAR---the morning-bright edition.      To settle in for a hour while supper cooked was just the nicest thing, reminiscent of so many of my own relatives in their own quiet lives.   Sitting in the little low rocker while good scents of supper filled the house---it was a lazy form of taking up knitting or darning, somehow, in the succession of our family history---reading the paper.

The NEWS dwindled away, ceased to print, and as our life-pace quickened a bit, with family moving here, and grandchildren being added, the great piles of orange-wrapped, unread STARS in the store-room grew,  like a haystack in the Fall.   The interest was just not there, for me, in these days of forty news channels and internet.

So, no.   I don't read a daily paper, unless you count peering through the cloudy windows of dispenser-stands as we walk past to the Sunshine Kitchen or IHOP.

But the charm of the thing is imprinted, like one of those moments from a movie in which you’re in the picture, and assume that you will have that life, live in that light, experience those calm, cricket afternoons on the porch with a fresh-pressed Press in your hands, the all-around sun peeping through the wisteria, the creak of the old white glider and the soft swish of the lawn sprinkler keeping company with the gentle rustle of the page-turns.

I can see the relaxing of it---Uncle Jake settling into his flocked-maroon platform rocker, those long lanky legs knee-looped and easy, with each section of the paper read, dropped onto the carpet beside the chair, and the smoking stand slowly filling with Camel butts and the shreds off a TUMS roll.

 

Thomas Hart Benton---Indianapolis Museum of Art

Another older man, husband of the dear woman who came each day to see to my children while I went to work---John sat in the same posture at his own kitchen table, a mere twenty miles and a universe away from that prosperous white business owner. The shine of John’s thin dark face matched the gleam of his steel-rimmed glasses, as he totally lost himself in the news of the day---a soft snap of chewing gum and turn of a page the only signs of movement.   I can remember a gentle envy of this man who had so little---a coveting of the absolute immersion in something other than the scurry of getting home and getting supper on, and homework and laundry and family.    He was reading the paper, concentrating through those thick spectacles, lips sounding an occasional word, taking it all in, and that was enough for that moment.

I think they should ALL be Afternoon Papers.   Let us get up, accomplish some things in our days, and THEN Choose the News, if we’re inclined.  Most things are easier to face as the day winds down, I think, and the world needs lots of cushioning, right now.