Whenever I go out on a cold and rainy day, I think back to my days selling newspapers in front of St. Gregory’s Church in Dorchester or, on occasion, in front of St. Mary of the Angels Church in Egleston Square in Roxbury.  This was long before Gore-Tex and other modern materials that keep people dry and the insulated coats that are so common in the 21st century.

There is nothing like ink on your hands on a rainy day when selling newspapers: There’s not much you can do about it except wash your hands with soap and hot water time and time again until the ink is gone! As hard as one tries, it is difficult to keep newspapers dry in the middle of a rainstorm. However insulated one might be, it is very difficult to sell newspapers when your fingers are frozen.

We would assemble the newspapers early sections in the basement of Mr. O’Neill’s cellar on Mother Julia Road every Saturday. Back then, there were lots of inserts and mighty large classified sections in the Sunday papers that came off the presses on Thursday and Friday. Mr. O’Neill was the janitor for the church. He had many children and was perhaps the strongest man I had ever seen. He could plow a foot of snow with a little hand plow almost effortlessly. He had been born in Scotland and came to this country to raise his family.

The news sections arrived from the newspaper plants late Saturday night into Sunday, and they were added to the original sections before we distributed some of the complete editions out to three stations outside the major doors of the church in the morning, keeping most of them in Mr. Connolly’s station wagon until they were ready to be brought to the sidewalk and sold. 

I was never very good at stacking newspapers, as Mr. Connolly would often remind me. 

Once when I was selling papers in Egleston Square, it was raining cats and dogs and I was there on my own. Fr. Thomas Corrigan, a young priest assigned to St. Mary of the Angels, drove his car around the corner to the front of the church and invited me to sit inside and have a cup of hot coffee. Even when I went into the church to go to Mass, nobody ever touched any of the newspapers. If someone took a newspaper they would leave a quarter. I think people generally appreciated that they could buy a newspaper on their way out of church.

Of course, I am dating myself, because the 1960s were a time when most everybody went to church on Sunday and most everybody bought a Sunday paper.

Friends of mine had other stations. One of the Weinberg brothers (their father worked with my father at the Boston Herald) was my classmate at Boston Latin School. He sold papers at Morton Street and Blue Hill Avenue – a great location. Others would sell them outside subway stations. 
It was not easy work, but it was a great way to learn plenty about life. It also convinced me that I prefer to work indoors.

Lawrence S. DiCara is a Dorchester native and former Boston City Councillor who practices law in Boston.