Before the proliferation of television and the 24-hour news cycle, young and energetic paper boys rode cycles of a different kind to deliver the news of the day to the public.

One of those boys is now 85 — but with a picture of those days tinted with fond memories and a character built by the job.

Friends say Paul F. Franco is among the last of the area’s paper boys from the days of 10-cent salt and 5-cents-a-gallon gas.

“He’s perhaps one of the oldest, still-living local carriers,” said Jon Pennebaker, who has rented from Franco for years.

Today, Oct. 13, has been deemed International Newspaper Carrier Day by the Newspaper Association of America. It honors everyone who delivers newspapers or has delivered them in the past.

It commemorates the hiring of the first newspaper carrier in 1833, when 10-year-old Barney Flaherty was hired by the New York Sun.

From age 12 until he graduated from St. Aloysius in 1941, Franco was a newspaper carrier for the Vicksburg Post-Herald, borne of the 1925 purchase of the Vicksburg Herald by the Vicksburg Evening Post.

To this day, he remembers his route — a 4-mile trek on a bicycle from the Vicksburg Post-Herald building on Crawford Street to where his family lived on Old Jackson Road.

It was a journey that began when school let out for the day on weekdays and at sunrise to toss morning papers on Sundays.

“It was kinda rough,” Franco said. “It gave me good money to spend.”

Franco reminisces about having to collect the weekly subscription rate of 20 cents from some folks.

“I’d have to cut them off,” Franco said.

Dogs running loose in the neighborhood could be a challenge, too.

“I can’t remember being bitten, though, to the best of my knowledge.”

The son of Italian immigrants, Franco was the youngest of six in a home that had newsprint as one of its staples. Two older brothers, Joe and Raphael, carried papers as well.

At the height of the Great Depression, Franco made $10 to $12.50 per week, good enough to pay for school textbooks, supplies and clothes.

“We had to pay for everything,” he said.

His rides through old Vicksburg took him down paths laden with the symbols of the day and time — a few still riding on horse and buggy, streetcars downtown and unpaved city streets.

“East Main Street was gravel back then,” Franco said. “It could be muddy, but I didn’t go fast because you had to throw the papers.”

That task was made easier when he bought a used, two-door Chevrolet sedan for $100, cutting his trip down to an hour.

“I had a helper with me who would throw the papers,” Franco said.

After high school, Franco worked briefly for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in its former home in the federal courthouse and post office.

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Franco was drafted into the U.S. Army Air Corps. During World War II, he served in the Asia-Pacific theatre in Africa.

He returned to Vicksburg and worked for the Corps of Engineers for 40 years before his retirement from the Army in 1982.

Despite modern-day comforts of throwing papers from vehicles instead of bicycles, Franco doesn’t envision doing it again.

“I wouldn’t want to do that job now,” he said.