Illustration: HAI HA
At that time, the Internet was not yet popular, the roads were far and difficult, each place had only one "news agency" headquartered in the market, where aunts and uncles could freely copy all kinds of news from "Iraq" to "Ba just had a fight with Bay".
No more Europe or the Middle East, things happening in Saigon or just the other province seem so strange.
Luckily, at that time there were still newspapers, such as Tuoi Tre Daily, Tuoi Tre Cuoi Tuan, the bi-monthly Tuoi Tre Cuoi, and then there were also weekly knowledge dissemination newspapers.
At the end of the month, I would collect a stack of newspapers and leave them in front of my house. The grocery store lady nearby would come by to buy or exchange them for some cooking oil, fish sauce, or soy sauce. Usually, the old newspapers would be saved to line or wrap fragile items.
The grocer shared some of her bread with the woman who parked her cart at the intersection. The bread seller took the newspaper home and cut it into square pieces to use as a bread to line the bread rolls and sell to customers.
Before reaching these two ladies, the newspaper must of course have passed through the hands of its subscribers because, after all, the function of a paper newspaper is not to package goods or line tables, but to provide information to readers, especially in a time when information is not easily accessible.
That said, it is not certain that the subscriber is the first person to read the newspaper.
In the old days, the postman would usually also deliver newspapers, and this newspaper delivery man never came at a fixed time. He had a talent for coming to that house at exactly 365 times out of 365 days a year, without a single second.
There were days when it rained early in the morning, so it was certain that we would have to wait until the afternoon to get the newspaper. If the rain had not stopped in the afternoon, we would have to wait until the next day. Likewise, the Sunday edition of the newspaper would have to wait until Monday to see it on the table. That was because the newspaper delivery man was busy on the weekend. The news could wait, but the weekend was very important. He had to conserve his energy to travel everywhere to bring stacks of letters, books, and newspapers to everyone.
In such a slow-paced era, it seems like the Earth doesn't rotate too quickly. So what if we have to wait until Monday to read news, reports, and events? We can read them on Tuesday, and in fact, the feeling isn't much different.
The examples of good people and good deeds published in the newspaper are not less sparkling because of this, the unfortunate and lonely lives that the press reflects are not because of their late appearance that they cannot anchor in the minds of readers. The Tuoi Tre newspaper is not because of this that it has turned into the Tuoi Gia newspaper, the world is not a paradise where one moment passing by is like a hundred years.
Even though for decades the paperboy only delivered the paper during the week, and sometimes when he was busy he would combine two or three issues to deliver at once, there was never a single complaint. In the old days, people were more generous.
On the other hand, if the uncle delivers the newspaper early, the homeowner may not have a chance to read it first, because the neighbor next door keeps coming over to borrow the newspaper. Many times, the homeowner hasn't even had time to open the newspaper yet, but he lets him read it first.
Never mind, staying at home to do business is also boring, especially when there are few customers and only flies flying around. Having a newspaper in hand, waving it away is also convenient.
But the neighbor did not always remember to return the newspaper, so the owner waited and had to urge his son: "Go ask for the Tuoi Tre newspaper to read!" So the son trotted off to ask for the newspaper, often getting lost in a game of marbles by the roadside, the newspaper under his arm, just watching the multi-colored marbles like stars constantly hitting each other.
Usually, the homeowner had to finish lunch before he could pick up the newspaper to read if his mother, whom the boy called grandmother, did not take the newspaper into the room to read first. At over seventy years old, she still kept the habit from her kindergarten days, of reading aloud whatever she read.
In the quiet noon, the sound of cải lương from someone's transistor radio echoed, the "broadcasting" voice of my grandmother was hoarse, the paper newspaper turned into a radio newspaper, so much news just poured into my ears, from one page to another.
If you miss a moment or forget the content, it’s okay, the newspaper is still there to be read again. But once it’s in Grandma’s hands, it’s a bit difficult. She gets annoyed when the newspaper keeps falling apart and getting messy, so she staples it back together. This wouldn’t be a problem if Grandma didn’t occasionally staple… the wrong page. So she has to take the trouble to remove the staples and rearrange the pages.
The newspaper had its own advantages, for example, if the neighbor and his old lady who lived not far from the owner's house came to borrow the newspaper. So the two discussed and divided the Tuoi Tre newspaper like a martial arts manual, and set a date and time to exchange and continue reading.
The old lady usually stopped by once in a while to borrow the newspaper, and only if she was unlucky did she have the same day as her neighbor. She usually borrowed her husband too, and when she returned it, she also brought her husband along, no one had time to check to see if there was any money left.
She waited for the news to settle like a layer of sediment to drink the clear drops above. Those were short stories, essays, interesting information here and there, examples of good people doing good deeds, students overcoming difficulties to study well… that were often seen in Tuoi Tre. She did not look there for big or small scandals, fleeting trends, phenomena that became famous for three days and then completely sank into oblivion.
She didn't look for it because she didn't need it, because in the end, all of that didn't affect her, didn't make her life happier or sadder. If anything remained, it was the newspaper pages that someone meticulously cut out, pasted into a notebook like a collection, to read again and again, feeling nostalgic for a bit of humanity, a bit of affection, human love and life in a crazy world where news follows news endlessly, only the moment in life is the time to stop privately...
Once upon a time in Sam Mountain...
The old lady's eyesight is bad so she can't read the newspaper anymore. The neighbor has moved away.
Then one day the boy who was sent to ask for the Tuoi Tre newspaper that his neighbor had borrowed started to have articles published in Tuoi Tre. Sometimes he tried to imagine how those neighbors would react if they still read the newspaper and found out that he was the author.
Sometimes it strings together a paper's adventure from the printing house to its final destination, the bread cart, through the hands of different men, women, old and young, who read it in different ways.
Like Tuoi Tre newspaper, some people will open it right in the middle of the page, that is where the cultural and entertainment news is, or some people read the newspaper from back to front, starting with international news... Or during exam season, people excitedly check the list of successful candidates...
The paper itself has a rhythm and allows people to find it in different ways. A rhythm that is lost in the new age, an age that I have the feeling has no patience to listen to any story that begins with the sentence
Once upon a time…
Source: https://tuoitre.vn/to-bao-phieu-luu-ky-20250827105858252.htm
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