“I guess I’ll get the papers and go home.”

This 1946 hit, recorded by the Mills Brothers and others, hits home. It strikes a melancholy note as print newspapers shrink or shut down. Not to belittle online “newspapers” that seem to have breathed new life into an old business.  But the song describes a time when to get a newspaper was more than a search for the latest news. It wasn’t just a digital click. It was a physical act and an emotional commitment.

I recall going to college in New York City in the 1960s and getting the Sunday papers on Saturday night.  Even getting the morning papers from the bottom of the driveway is a ritual that barely survives. On the street where I live, with some 40 homes, fewer than a handful get the print paper delivered.

But the song is not just about newsprint.  It is about life as we once lived it.  When if ever, did you last “get the papers and go home?” It’s a bygone world, from a time when, with a romance gone wrong, what else was there to do but to go “get the papers and go home?”

I guess I’ll get the papers and go home
Like I’ve been doing ever since we’ve been apart
I get some consolation when I read
Of someone else’s lonely heart

I wonder if you get the papers too
And if you feel as melancholy as I do
Until you’re in my arms again, never more to roam
I guess I’ll get the papers and go home