The career of quite possibly the world’s oldest paperboy is over. Cal Larson, age 86, has quit the paperboy business.  After 18 years of delivering the Washington Post, day after day, week after week, Sunday edition after Sunday edition, Cal decided he’d had enough. One Saturday morning last month, after he rose at the crack of dawn, sorted newspapers, and finished bringing the daily news to three of Reston’s lower-income apartment complexes, Cal dropped the last paper on the last “welcome” mat. 

Cal ran his route every morning since 1991. He would rise at quarter to three in the morning, pull on his long underwear and head out to warm up his ’88 Subaru.  He would swallow a small glass of orange juice, perform some slight stretching, and drive down the block to pick up his daily batch of papers.  After the delivery van pulled out, Cal would be the only soul out on the street; a lone 80-something year-old paperboy loading bundles of newspapers into the trunk of his car. 

It wasn’t his age that made him decide to stay home these days. Cal still heads to his law practice of Larson, Lilienthal, and Morris nearly every day (some of his subscribers have also been bankruptcy clients of his law firm). His decision, he says, was more a frustration over the subscription process as a whole. Cal felt that, in the age of Internet news articles and where tangible papers contain more coupons than content, the paperboy was losing his place in journalism.  In today’s digitized world, where’s the need for the paper to get to the reader? 

After being in the newspaper business for 18 years, Cal ended his route with little pomp or circumstance.  Even though he was in his mid-80’s, Cal didn’t distinguish himself from any other paperboy, got paid “damn little” just like any other paperboy, and received exactly the same benefits from the Washington Post even with his many years of service. 

But if you ask Cal, he’ll say he didn’t do it for the money or fame, he did it for the exercise.  Indeed, he claims it was the paper route that’s been keeping him alive and mentally fit all these years. His daily routine is vastly superior to those of the runners and joggers, he points out, who rise as he was returning home.  With his mornings consisting of light lifting, bending, jogging, and sometimes push-ups, and pull-ups, Cal worked every muscle in his body. He says “there is no personal trainer anywhere that compares to my program.”  Having the paper route also provided an excuse for compulsory exercise; Cal had over seventy customers depending him to get up and out to drop off their papers. That’s seventy doors amongst a sea of apartments, keeping his muscles moving and his mind active and sharp.  If you ever get him on the topic of health reform, he’ll tell you all this country needs is a bit of compulsory exercise to get it back on track.

Now with his mornings free, Cal will be enjoying his semi-retirement from the back porch of his lakeside home, sipping his orange juice, eating toast, and reading the daily paper that some other paperboy has dropped off.  And he still gets out several times a day to walk the dog.