La Ruta

Memoir Short Story: May 2025

Photo by Waldemar on Unsplash

There’s an interesting phenomenon among the children of immigrants, an overwhelming sense of guilt for everything our parents left behind to start a new life. Eventually, we realize they left behind homes, parents, families, friends, jobs, lives, and pasts to begin again. This realization often fuels an unrelenting work ethic, a drive to make good on their sacrifices and succeed in the future they hoped to secure.

When my immigrant family finally settled in the Chicago suburb of Addison, our traditional values meant my father worked while my mother stayed home. Even in our middle-class suburb, we quickly realized that being a one income household wasn’t sustainable as our family grew. It wasn’t long before my mother picked up side jobs, like watching other kids, until my parents found la ruta—the paper route—just as I was finishing elementary school.

La ruta was an early-morning newspaper delivery job for the Daily Herald in Arlington Heights, an affluent suburb. The idea was simple: my parents would wake a few hours earlier than usual, finish the route before my brothers and I went to school, and then head to their respective day jobs—my dad at work, my mom managing our home. While the pay was decent for just a few hours of work, it was a war of attrition. Seven days a week. No weekends. No vacations. No holidays, snow days, or sick days. You showed up, or you found someone reliable to cover for you.

After my parents divorced in junior high, my mom kept working the route on her own for years, over a decade, while juggling one or two part-time jobs during the day. She cleaned houses, worked at a Catholic high school, and later at an insurance agency. As the firstborn, I was responsible for helping at home, making sure my three younger brothers were awake, fed, dressed, and ready for school. That’s where I learned to front-load my responsibilities, doing my homework right after school, even on Friday nights. Nothing could be left to chance, especially with my brother’s habit of finishing homework in the morning over his cereal.

I also helped with the paper route whenever I could. Before I was old enough to drive, I’d assist on weekends and school breaks, especially over Christmas when other carriers, mostly other Latin American immigrants, would ask for coverage so they could visit family back home. Covering extra routes during the winter break was a financial windfall, allowing us to buy gifts when we were scraping by on free school lunches, food stamps, hand-me-downs, and my mom’s cleaning jobs. By junior high, I was eager to take on more routes, particularly during summer, when it was easier to catch up on sleep.

Waking up between 3:30 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. wasn’t pleasant, but there was something calming about walking those quiet, still mornings in sleeping neighborhoods. Before we could actually start delivering newspapers, though, we’d head to the distribution center to wait for the freshly printed newspapers. The nostalgic image of newspapers and coffee, like in Folgers commercials, doesn’t resonate with me. For me, it evokes lost sleep and dried, ink-stained hands. While you could pay someone to roll your papers, it made more financial sense to do it ourselves—combining sections, securing them with rubber bands or plastic sleeves, and loading the car with 150–300 papers.

Mondays were the easiest days since the paper was light, and we could fit an entire route into two carrier bags. Sundays and holidays like Thanksgiving were the worst, overstuffed with ads and special sections. Unlike other newspapers that offered curbside delivery, we provided porch service, which meant extra care navigating icy driveways and front steps. My mom’s minivan made things easier; we would open the side sliding door as she drove slowly, and she would point out the houses while we jumped out to deliver the news. Unlike the ’80s video game Paperboy, we weren’t on bikes, mostly on foot, but we still had the occasional run-in with dogs or sprinklers, adding a bit of excitement.

By high school, I was old enough to drive and convinced my mom to let me take on a route to help the family, and, admittedly, to help myself financially. I preferred parking in one central spot and running the route on foot, treating it as morning exercise. My younger brothers were now old enough to get ready for school on their own, freeing me up to help my mom finish her route before school started.

My new schedule was relentless: wake up before 4 a.m., do the route, shower quickly, attend school, go to sports practice, finish homework, and try to get to bed early. After a few weeks, I needed help. I’d beg my second brother on weekends to join me, not so much for the work, but for the company. Unfortunately, he preferred to sleep during the drive to work, which didn’t help much. On one such morning, I drifted off behind the wheel, accidentally veering into a turn lane when I meant to go straight. I overcorrected. We got pulled over. I knew about nighttime curfews, but the officer informed us there was also a morning restriction, we couldn’t be out that early without a work permit. We were taken to the station until an adult picked us up. My brother, unfazed, took a nap in the holding cell while I used my “one phone call” to reach my uncle so we could get back to work.

Delays like this happened a lot and vehicle mishaps were the most common. This was before smartphones, so we always carried quarters for payphones and later beepers. Flat tires, dead batteries, you name it, we dealt with it. One winter, I drove a rusted-out hatchback with a missing floorboard on the driver’s side. We placed a two-by-four over the hole to keep our feet from touching the road like Fred Flintstone, but it didn’t help much in the rain or snow.

But car troubles were nothing compared to injuries. My mom once tore her meniscus after a fall on the route. Injuries like that could spell financial disaster for a family teetering on the edge of survival. Whether police encounters, car issues, or physical injuries we had to learn perseverance. We just kept going.

After we resolved the work permit issue, I returned to my routine—without my brother, who was too young to continue. I kept my schedule to myself, not wanting to explain to friends or teachers why I was always so tired. But the strain started to show, especially in my seventh-period honors physics class. I genuinely enjoyed the subject, but between the time of day and the teacher’s soft, monotone voice, I often drifted off. His frustration grew with each passing week. Eventually, during a lesson on electricity, he called me to the front of the class to complete an electrical circuit demonstration. Following his instructions, I placed my hands on two metal posts. When he flipped the switch, a jolt of current surged through me, like touching an outlet. It wasn’t painful, but the metallic taste in my mouth and the laughter from my classmates stung.

“Hopefully, that’ll teach you not to fall asleep in my class,” he quipped.

Ironically, around the same time, my math teacher was puzzled by how I struggled in Algebra II while excelling in Physics. I told her, a little smugly, that maybe my physics teacher was just better at his job.

But they were both right, I was burning the candle at both ends. The exhaustion was catching up to me, and I couldn’t afford for my grades to slip. As a low-income student, my GPA was my ticket to better opportunities.

I never explained my situation to my teachers, not out of shame, but perhaps pride. The same pride that kept me from telling people why my mom couldn’t attend school events or why she’d fall asleep during long performances. Pride and guilt are bickering twins born of the same mother.

From my mom, I inherited my work ethic. But from those early mornings, I also developed an insatiable curiosity, a drive to find a better way. As we navigated la ruta, we would point out houses we dreamed of owning, estimating how many routes and years it would take to save enough. Eventually, reality set in, college and better-paying jobs were the only paths forward.

Years later, when people ask why my mom walks with a limp, I think of the sacrifices she made. When I see a student athlete who looks tired or is going without, I’m ready with extra snacks, equipment, and encouragement, because I know what it’s like to carry more than just a backpack to school.

Even today, I enjoy walking my neighborhood before dawn on my terms, not out of necessity. I also appreciate reading a good newspaper, but understand the hard work it takes to get it to my doorstep every single day.

My immigrant parents gave me the opportunity to dream so that I could one day give my children the chance to follow theirs. It’s strange to think how much sleep we had to sacrifice to realize those dreams. Some down payments are made in dollars, others in time, sweat, and years lost. The true cost isn’t always obvious, but that’s the essence of work ethic: making something out of nothing. Making a lot of out something small. Because when you start with nothing, you have everything to lose, and you’ll fight for every inch, every step, to keep what you’ve earned.