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The Sunday newspaper in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was a big fat bundle of paper.

My route covered two sections. One section was about 50 houses on city streets where all the lots had been developed. The other section was about 30 houses in an area where some houses sat side by side, and others were separated by long stretches of undeveloped farm land.

It was too much walking to deliver papers in the undeveloped section, so I used my motorbike. The bag of papers could be slung over the front fender and handle bars. As I motored by the houses I grabbed papers and tossed them at porches. Sometimes I hit the porch, sometimes not quite. Occasionally a customer had to fetch his paper from the roof of his house or from the bushes. People really should not have put flower pots on the railings of their porches. I didn't aim to hit these pots, but sometimes...

Once a friend threw a paper through a window. He apologized and paid for the window. I never did that, but I did take out a few flowers pots. Anyway, it was pretty tricky to sling a newspaper on a porch while whizzing by on a motorbike.

Every household subscribed to the Sunday newspaper. At the time, we had radio and movies, but no TV or Internet. When World Series baseball games were broadcast on radio, the newspaper headline carried the score of the game over a long play-by-play story. Even as World War II became the biggest news, the paper's headline would be "Browns Beat Cardinals 4-2!" Allied troops were advancing across Europe and taking islands from Japan in 1944. But when the World Series was being played in St. Louis between the St. Louis Browns and the St. Louis Cardinals, the ballgame was the headline for the day.

Cedar Rapids had a population of about 60,000 then. I don't know how fat the papers were in major cities like St. Louis or Chicago, but I remember how big the Sunday Cedar Rapids Gazette seemed on the day when a folded Sunday paper exploded in mid air.

The paper was not held together by any rubber bands or plastic wrappers. It was just rolled and folded and tucked into itself. Usually this was good enough. But one Sunday morn I threw a paper toward a porch, and at the height of its arc it came unfolded. Every page of every section of that newspaper separated, and a flock of paper birds floated in the air and settled over the lawn. Fortunately there was no wind, so once the pages were on the ground they stayed put. I took quite a while to gather the pages and assemble the paper into its original form. But I did it gladly, especially putting the comics into the proper order.

The explosion and floating display, a wonderful sight, is something you will never see today. The newspapers are too skimpy, and they are tucked into plastic bags. Someday in the not-too-distant future the last person who knows how to do the newsboy fold on a Sunday paper will pass away. The last person who can toss a folded paper onto a porch while whizzing by on a motorbike and not hit the flower pots will pass away.

And is there still anyone who can remember fetching his newspaper from the roof? Sometimes a customer would phone and say, "I didn't get a paper!" And I would say, "Have you looked on your roof...or in the bushes?"

- Dean Norman

Dean Norman is a cartoonist and humor writer, whose work has appeared in greeting cards,The New Yorker, MAD Magazine, The Cleveland Plain Dealer Sunday Magazineand The Kansas City Star. He's also written comedy for cartoon shows and written and illustrated children's books. He illustrated a cartoon book for Cleveland Metroparks, Cleveland Metroparks Adventures.