Extra extra read all about. Extra extra read all about it! I’m not sure why I knew to say that, how the phrase was introduced to me. But I knew that if I were to sell any of the newspapers in the stack at my feet I’d have to shout it with an aire of importance.

FOr several weekends a year I’d been waking up before the sun for as long as I could remember. My parents would gently wake us, we’d walk carelessly down the hall with our eyes half open in …our oversized T-shirts we referred to as nightgowns, and get as ready as we could. The old chevy pick up truck would be running already and the cab would be warm. It was easy to fall back asleep once inside.

We always stopped at a circle k and got hot chocolate. Sometimes if we were lucky my dad would spike it with a splash of coffee. We weren’t fully out of our dreams from the night before until the hot chocolate touched our lips.

We’d pull up to our spots at the mile high flea market c-81 and c-79. Some times we’d have to help our parents set up the canopy and tarps, the tables and unpack the boxes of glittery T-shirts, sweats, plain T’s, jam sets and other random piles of new clothing. My favorite part was making the signs the night before depending on what merchandise we’d be selling. My dad made a really cool 2 and I’d been practicing.

This week though would be different. My parents had managed to get us employed not only by them, but also the Denver Post. We slipped on our Denver Post printed aprons, went over how much change we’d been given to hand out as change for the 100th time and all different combinations of change to give depending on the amount of papers being sold and the money given us. We had a calculator in the other pocket too though, just for back up.

The stack of papers were heavy almost too heavy for my 7 year old fingers. We walked away and parked ourselves a few rows over from our parents and started shouting Extra Extra read all about it.

When we’d exhausted that space and our lungs, we went booth by booth with doe eyes trying to sell what we had left. We were hungry and the smell of turkey legs cooking was just too much for us.

Agreed. We’d abandon the remaining newspapers, later claiming they were stolen when we were distracted by something, take our earnings and buy a giant succulent turkey leg. After all we’d earned it.