you can't read it in the sunday papers: tony soprano, pandemic delivery, and me

Since the pandemic, newspapers are no longer delivered right to apartment doors in my building but in lobby instead (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

“Wednesday morning papers didn’t come,” Paul McCartney sings on the Beatles’ 1968 single “Lady Madonna.”

The pandemic lockdown has made me recall another time when the papers didn’t come.

One of the many joys of living in a doorman building in New York City is having the newspaper delivered right outside your apartment every morning, well before you’ve woken up.

When I lived in Chinatown in the massive post-Depression complex known as Knickerbocker Village, I had to pick up the paper each day from a bodega around the corner on my way to the subway. I became friendly with the people who worked there, and I felt special when they started saving me a copy of New York Newsday so it would be waiting for me when I stopped by, usually around 8:30 or so. If I came in and saw none left, I didn’t have to worry because they had set one aside for me.

But when my wife and I moved to Murray Hill to an elevator building, all I had to do was open our door a smidgen after I had woken up and reach my hand out to grab the Daily News (and, on Sundays, Newsday), parked right on the carpet in front of our apartment. We later added the Wall Street Journal.

However, during the pandemic, the building decided not to allow any delivery people to use the elevators or stairs, so everything was left in the lobby. To get our newspapers or food, we had to get dressed, put on a mask, and pick up the items ourselves. Oh, the ignominy. It wasn’t quite Tony Soprano going to the end of the driveway to get his newspaper, but we understood.

I know what you’re thinking, and you’re correct: I read print newspapers. But I’m not the only one. According to recent Pew, WordsRated, and Attest surveys, about one third of Americans still read print newspapers at least once a week, although circulation has sunk to 24 million as of 2020 (and lower since, with many local papers going out of business), and only about three percent of US adults consider newspapers their primary source of information.

Like Joe Jackson sings, “Mother doesn’t go out anymore / Just sits at home and rolls her spastic eyes / But every weekend through the door / Come words of wisdom from the world outside . . . You can read it in the Sunday papers / Read it in the Sunday papers / Sunday papers, don’t ask no questions / Sunday papers, don’t get no lies.”

Of course, I also still use a landline; it wasn’t until August 2021 that I got my first smartphone, and that was mostly for working remotely as well as for proving my vaccination status. If you call me on it, I’m unlikely to answer, because I don’t know how to.

But now, in May 2023, the building still doesn’t allow delivery people to go directly to individual apartments to hand off food, papers, whatever. A lot of residents are not happy about that. In the scheme of things, it’s really no big deal, but it kinda makes no sense now that the pandemic is almost a (bad) memory.

But going back about twenty-five years, one morning the Daily News didn’t come. I reached my hand out the door and nothing was there.

I called the delivery service and asked them to send the paper again; they complied.

The next day, the same thing; they sent the paper after I complained, although they assured me it had been delivered earlier.

The day after that, no paper; I was livid. They again promised that their guy had delivered it.

When I came home from work that night, I went to throw out some garbage. In the chute room, where everyone leaves their recycling, there it was: My paper.

Not only was it there on top of the pile, but I saw the delivery service had added a line to the label:

“MUST DEL APT DOOR 2 PAPERS” (I was receiving one paper during the week and two on Sunday.)

A newspaper thief was afoot.

I was livid.

Somebody in the building was stealing my newspaper, reading it, then tossing it out.

I was determined to catch this hardened, hard-hearted criminal.

The next morning, I set my alarm to wake me ridiculously early and, upon getting up, sat down behind the front door, listening closely for the paper to be delivered, then stolen. I fell asleep. When I awoke, the paper was gone.

Shit.

I tried the same thing the next day, but I fell asleep again.

Damn it.

By this time, my wife was ready to have me committed, but I didn’t know what else to do.

I came up with a genius idea: The next morning, I waited behind the door for the paper to be delivered. When it came, I brought it inside, put a rubber band around it, and tied it to a string that I held through the slit between the bottom of the door and the doorsill.

I fell asleep. When I woke up, the paper was gone; all I had was the string and the rubber band.

Morning after morning, the paper didn’t come (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

I tried again the next morning, tightening the rubber band. I was Santiago in Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, obsessed with catching that marlin no matter the cost.

“Who knows? Maybe today. Every day is a new day,” Santiago says to himself in the book. “It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.” Later, Hemingway writes, “After he judged that his right hand had been in the water long enough he took it out and looked at it. ‘It is not bad,’ he said. ‘And pain does not matter to a man.’”

The string was tied tight around my right hand. I was ready to be lucky.

I got a nibble.

I held tight.

I felt a pull. Then another.

I had him.

I whipped open the door, standing face-to-face with the monster.

I slumped a bit as the anger drained from my body.

It was the sweet old man with dementia who lived down the hall by himself. He was in a tattered bathrobe and wearing fuzzy slippers. He looked into my eyes, confused; this was not Tony Soprano.

“Oh, good morning,” I said to him. I explained that this was my paper and that he couldn’t just take it.

“I thought it was for anyone,” he replied.

“No, if it’s in front of someone’s door like this, it’s for them,” I said. “When I’m done, I’m happy to drop it off at your door.”

Without saying anything more, he walked slowly back to his apartment.

I felt terrible.

A few nights later, there was a knock at our door. It was the man, asking if I wanted to come over and watch some movies on DVD with him. I told him not now but maybe another time. Within a year, he had left us.

After Santiago catches the marlin, he then has to make it back to shore, battling hungry sharks. Hemingway writes, “It was too good to last, he thought. I wish it had been a dream now and that I had never hooked the fish and was alone in bed on the newspapers. ‘But man is not made for defeat,’ he said. ‘A man can be destroyed but not defeated.’”

I think of my old neighbor often, especially when I read the label on the newspapers, which still says “MUST DEL APT DOOR 2 PAPERS.” I wonder if that will be me someday.

It no longer bothers me that I have to go downstairs to retrieve our papers, our food deliveries. So yeah, the pandemic has changed a lot about our daily life.

But we are not defeated.

[You can follow Mark Rifkin and This Week in New York every day here.]