The Congenial Paperboy
My life has fallen into a few stages.
As a child, I lived in Box Hill when it was village. I then became pastor to the slums of inner Melbourne for eight years. I was then a country parson and a teacher at a one teacher bush school out at Jackson Creek in Western Victoria and then for 13 years, I was a suburban minister in one of Australia’s largest suburban ministries.
And then, for more than 27 years I’ve been Superintendent in Sydney of Wesley Mission, Australia’s largest church ministry.
I’ve told you stories of people in each of these places.
Tonight I want you to come with me into the heart of the city.
It doesn’t take one long walking around the street of the inner city day after day to come to know the regular people of the city.
In spite of the fact that Sydney is a great city of 4 million people, there is only a relatively small number—some hundreds of thousands—who go into the central business district every day.
And if this part of the city is your beat, then you get to know the regulars quite well.
Every morning there are the people who are rushing to work, clutching their polystyrene cups of coffee and laden down with black computer bags. Without that shot of caffeine, the day could not begin.
There are people coming off the train with books under their arms and well-folded newspapers looking bleary eyed, indicating they have been reading or sleeping as they’ve travelled up from Shellharbour or Newcastle or Lithgow. So many spend 4 hours a day on a train coming to and from work.
There is the hulking addict who wanders around the streets of the CBD in the early morning air wearing only thongs with blackened and diseased feet. He injects into the back of his heels and his heels are festered and covered with sores where they have become infected.
There is Florence the lady who carries a dozen or more plastic bags full of old newspapers and other interesting things that she has found. She goes through each of the bins around the main streets looking for food and anything that could be worthwhile, including aluminium cans. She always rejects my offer of a breakfast at McDonald’s on me.
In earlier years there was always the man with the pram wearing a motorcycle helmet, quietly shuffling along the street calling out for people to get out of his way. He’d been bashed a number of times in Hyde Park of a night time and therefore his pram carries his tin chest with heavy chains and locks upon it and a motorcycle helmet to protect his head. He is suspicious of everybody and will not speak to people.
There is a smart looking well-dressed Rabbi, always wearing his hat walking briskly up to his synagogue office.
There is the hulking man with dark skin—dark not from a racial pigmentation, but from dirt—who has been hunted out of his doorway where he’d slept the night. He makes his way to McDonald’s, and if he shouts they will give him a burger and a coffee just to keep him quiet and from disturbing buyers who purchase their breakfast. He is a manipulator and frightens shopkeepers. They would rather give him what he wants rather than have a scene which could frighten away paying customers.
And there are always taxi drivers, either sitting on the ranks or standing on the footpath beside their cab waiting for the people to come. They have already been working for 4 hours and they have another 10 hours to go before their long day is finished.
And on the corner of the street there is a pile of newspapers, a stand with magazines and a hard working paperboy. Why we still call them paperboys I am not sure. Most of them are men in their later years of life.
The paperboy that I came to know early in my time at Wesley Mission was not exactly a boy. He was a mature man. But he was at his newsstand at 5:30am every morning.
The streets were always wet, as the cleaning machines had gone through spraying them with water and brushing up the litter from the gutters. People would be getting off the buses and coming up from the parking stations and from the underground railway, walking past, giving him money and without a word passing on into the great office buildings. Gradually the morning traffic would build up and he would be there with a pile of papers under one arm and a handful of loose cash in the other.
I found him to be a smiling and a cheery man. His name was John Granger. He stood like an island on the corner of Castlereagh Street and Market Street with the stream of people flowing around him every day.
John was different to other paperboys. He was a man of the country. In fact, if people ever stopped and talked with him they would be in for a great surprise. He was always a man with unflustered composure, a cheery word and a smile. He would puzzle people with his happy face.
I got to know him because he kept his newspapers and magazines for storage in the front of our Wesley Chapel on Castlereagh Street underneath the stairs by the rickety old lift. John would be there first thing in the morning to unpack his stand and take out his magazines and set up for business at 5:30 am.
John used to come every Thursday to our lunchtime Chapel in the City, which was held in those days in the old Wesley Chapel before we demolished it to build the new Wesley Centre. He found the Chapel Service was a pause in the midst of his busy day that refreshed him. We often used to speak together after Chapel or when I was walking the streets to some appointment.
John would stand by his newsstand every day, spending 12 or 14 hours on his feet selling, nodding, smiling and yarning with people. The big buses would come past and out of their exhaust pipes, black oily smoke would surround him. Amid all the noise and fumes, the rush and bustle and the mass of very faces, John seemed quite at home.
But his home was actually far away. John would see more people in the first hour of his workday on the corner of Market Street and Castlereagh Street than his hometown would probably see in a month of Sunday’s.
John’s real home was in Harden, down near Canberra. He was Mayor of the Murrumburrah Municipal Council and also the first President of the Harden Shire. He served on his council for 29 years, both as Councillor and Mayor. One year he was named Citizen of the Year.
In the local Harden Methodist Church, he was the Circuit—steward, the Trustee of the property, Sunday School Superintendent and regular attendee at every service. For more than 20 years he and his wife Lois were the heart beat of the Harden Methodist Church. He and his parents before him ran the local general store that also included some petrol pumps.
Over the year John Granger had worked well in the general store and was known by everybody. Nothing was a trouble for him. If anyone came in with any request he would be sure to get it, if he didn’t already have it on his shelves.
However, major big stores moved in the surrounding towns and that hit the little town of Harden and it’s few shops and the Granger General Store.
The country towns were dying. It was time for John to close and go to the city to make his living. Nothing he could do would make a difference. Once the banks and post offices and wool store closed, the other shops feel like dominoes. People who had to go to bigger towns for the bank or post office did their other shopping while they were there, in the bigger supermarkets.
He decided to buy a newsstand on the corner of Castlereagh Street and Market Street and Sydney gained a cheery Christian paper seller.
But you just can’t close up a general store that is only one in the community and one that keeps the community going. So John and his wife Lois made tough decision. John would come to the city and work to earn the money to keep Lois and the store and their three children going. Every weekend he would go back to Harden to be with his wife and the three children.
That could not go on forever and eventually John purchased a newsagency in Chippendale and Lois and the children came up to the city.
It was a hard decision for John to turn away from the country town that he and his parents and other family members had known. It was hard to turn their back on a community knowing that once the main store had closed there would be nothing to replace it. The country towns were dying. It was hard also to come to a city where he knew nobody and where his family would start off all over again.
I guess John must have found a great deal of difference in the customers he had the corner of Castlereagh Street and Market Street to those he met at Harden. In Harden everyone would come in and have a yarn and ask about you, the family members, the state of business, discuss the weather, the rainfall, price of wool and the health of the chooks that John had in the backyard. In the city they didn’t speak a word. They would walk past, drop money into one hand and just take the paper with the other and head off towards their offices.
However, John found that by being friendly some people did stop. His country way and smile and greeting encouraged some people to stop and share their problems with him.
John told me on one occasion that he had just been talking with a woman who was very upset. She had just lost $40 on a poker machine in a licensed club just around the corner from him. Another man had been very upset because during the night he had disturbed a burglar in his home and shot him with a gun and had been interrogated by the police all morning.
“A person can come and talk to me whether he wants to buy a paper or not” said John, “Some people have real burdens to carry and they seem to want to unload on someone who doesn’t know them.” In one way, his experiences as a Councillor and Mayor fitted him for his new role as advisor and confidant to the passers-by on the streets. Counsellor, confidant, friend on the street corner. In the ancient world the wise old men sat at the city gate and performed the same function. Here in Sydney, John was the wise man at the corner.
John had the habit of smiling at people and greeting them warmly as he handed them the paper. “People are really surprised that I am happy. All city people seem to live for is their work. It’s all they have got to look forward to. I have found out if you speak to city people they are only too willing to stop and talk. Many of them are lonely. In the country, people can live on their own and not see another person but they are not really lonely. Here in the city, people see lots of people, but they are really lonely inside. If you take time to speak to them kindly, you will see their face light up.”
There is a certain spiritual depth to John that impressed me. His warmth and concern for other people show in the way that he handles his papers and magazines. His manner seems to say that money isn’t everything. He had time for people.
I remember on one occasion John telling me that he had some people who came in from the suburbs on a regular basis to buy magazines from him rather than buy them in a supermarket simply because they wanted to stop and have a chat.
John Granger, the former town businessman, the Councillor and Mayor, has never lost his concern for the ordinary person.
John thinks it’s hard to be a Christian working in the city, “There are greater distractions in the city that the Christian has to be aware of, distractions that aren’t there in the country” he says. After many years of serving in the Chippendale Newsagency and on the corner of Castlereagh and Market Street, John and Lois retired and moved up to the Central Coast. Their life has blossomed for them; they have become active in the Uniting Church and today have a list of friends and a Christmas card list that would fill books.
In the midst of a bustling city there was a fine Christian, in the midst of a weary, burdened and rushing populous, standing on the corner selling newspapers.
John and Lois have retire now and shifted up to Toukley. The people there are less rushed and most are retired. They also have come to like the cheery man who has time for a chat.
In a stressful world, it is men like John Granger who make the difference for so many others.
The city of Sydney would grow to be one of the world’s great cities and Wesley Mission would grow to be one of the world’s great churches and I was privileged to spend each day in the heart of both.
