PAPRBOY isn’t built around a single moment or event. It unfolds across years, cities, jobs, relationships, and turning points that shaped a restless life in motion. What follows is a look at the major eras, places, and themes woven throughout the memoir—any one of which may resonate depending on where you’ve been, or where you’re headed.

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Growing Up in Peoria (1960s–1970s)

Theme: Midwestern roots, class, community, expectations

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A working-class childhood in Peoria, Illinois, shaped by neighborhood routines, paper routes, local characters, and the unspoken rules of showing up and getting by. This era captures a vanished slice of American life—before screens, before schedules, before escape felt possible.

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Paperboy Years: Learning Responsibility Early

Theme: Work, money, accountability, human nature

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Delivering newspapers as a young paperboy became an early education in responsibility, persistence, and dealing with people. Long before adulthood arrived, the job offered lessons about effort, fairness, and consequences that echo throughout the memoir.

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College Life in the Mid-1970s

Theme: Freedom, confusion, identity, drift

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College brought independence, missteps, and a growing awareness that there were no clear instructions for becoming an adult. These chapters reflect the uncertainty and trial-and-error reality of young adulthood during the 1970s.

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Life on the Road: The Bowling Industry Years

Theme: Hustle, travel, ambition, isolation

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During the bowling boom of the late 1970s and early 1980s, life became a string of territories, motel rooms, sales calls, friendships, and setbacks. Living and working in Fargo, Milwaukee, Columbus, and New Orleans offered opportunity—but also instability, loneliness, and hard-earned perspective.

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Marriage, Loss, and a Broken System

Theme: Family, injustice, endurance

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A young marriage ended painfully, followed by a custody battle that resulted in long separation from a son. These chapters explore the emotional toll of divorce, legal systems, and the quiet damage that lingers long after decisions are made.

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The Infamous “Animal House” Years

Theme: Survival, friendship, chaos, resilience

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A shared house in Deerfield, Illinois—later known simply as “the Animal House”—became a strange mix of refuge and pressure cooker. These chapters balance humor and hardship as friendships deepen and survival becomes the priority.

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Finding Solid Ground at the Chicago Tribune

Theme: Stability, timing, earned success

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After years of drifting and false starts, a job at the Chicago Tribune became something more—a foundation. This period reflects the moment when persistence finally met opportunity, changing the direction of a life.

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Enduring Friendships

Theme: Loyalty, shared history, connection

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One friendship, formed early and tested repeatedly, runs through the entire memoir. From adolescence to adulthood, through chaos and calm, it becomes a quiet reminder of the people who stay when everything else changes.

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Taken together, these stories form a memoir about work, failure, friendship, resilience, and the long road toward belonging. Whether readers connect through place, profession, family, or friendship, PAPRBOY is ultimately about finding meaning in motion—and learning, slowly, how to stand still.