Pretty Prairie ? The new year brought a big change in the daily routine of 84-year-old Elmer Flickinger. For the first time in nearly three decades, he didn’t have to complete his Hutchinson News route.

“There’s a tinge of sadness with a little relief,” he said Wednesday, his last day on the route. “I’ve got a lot of things to do.”

For 27 years, Flickinger has worked the paper route in this far southern Reno County town that he took over from his father, who gave it up at age 81 in October 1976. It a job that’s been in the family for almost four decades.

Elmer and his wife, Veda, 76, thought of the route as their “retirement” job; she filled in when Elmer was feeling ill, and in recent years his health problems have included diabetes and arthritis.

“It was time,” Veda said. “It wouldn’t be a bad job if the weather was nice and it was later in the morning.”

Elmer’s main career was as a bricklayer, and his first project a retirement home in Pretty Prairie built 50 years ago. In a career working for the state and later with his own company, Flickinger built schools, churches and homes. His specialty was fireplaces, both of brick and stone.

He also has worked as a milkman, collecting from area dairy farms, and even delivered trailer houses for two years.

But delivering the paper meant getting up at 4 a.m. — folks in Pretty Prairie like having the paper to read along with their morning coffee and many of them go to work pretty early, Flickinger explained.

And without fail, said neighbor Evelyn Graber, her paper arrived every morning just after 5:30 a.m. It was something she depended on for “years and years and years and years.”

By 6 a.m. Flickinger was done with his 125 deliveries.

Even though he won’t have papers to deliver anymore, he still expects to get up early.

“I have a lot of things to do: fishing, hunting, golf, wood carving. I’m looking forward to a little time off,” he said. “Time catches up with a guy, you know. It sneaks up on you.”