Deep in the byways of a Napa apartment complex on a September night, just a few blocks from the Register newsroom, Angela knew every doorway and driveway. I was at a complete loss.

Angela has been a Register carrier for 12 years.

Every night she tosses newspapers through the rolled-down window of her car while cruising through Old Town.

I asked her permission to ride along one night.

A newspaper editor should know how the whole operation works, and my bosses have nudged me toward going on a route with a Register carrier for years.

Further, my friend Tom Nunan — he of 30 years on the circulation side of the San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle, he who unearthed for me the hand-held metal hook he made to sling wire-bound bundles of newspapers into Examiner trucks and the “ring knife” (made by the Handy Twine Knife Co. of Sandusky, Ohio) he wore to slice plastic bundle straps — gave me a contemptuous look when I admitted I had not been on a route.

His mouth said nothing. His eyes said “management scum.”

A few days later I was leaning on the hood of Angela’s car at 10:30 p.m. in the Register parking lot.

 She was waiting for the mailroom guys to plop bundles of the newspaper, the one that I had helped edit and write headlines for earlier in the day, into an orange stacking cart and then wheel the cart to her car in the loading bay.

Angela placed bundles of Registers in the trunk and on the passenger side of the car.

She filled half of the back seat with papers. I fit in the space that remained.

We wheeled onto Seminary Street.

She had wrapped a thick wad of rubber bands around two of the fingers on her right hand.

As we maneuvered toward Walnut Street, she pulled a paper from the stack next to her, placing it in her line of vision atop the steering wheel.

She quickly folded it twice, slipped a rubber band over the newspaper and was on to the next one.

Every now and then she pulled a plastic bag from a hook dangling from the rear-view mirror and slid a copy inside.

She threw papers on Walnut, then Monroe, here and there and around to Fuller Way, a street I’d never noticed in a hundred trips past it.

This was an easy night.

Clear skies.

Summer weeknight.

No traffic.

Familiar route.

Clear skies means you don’t need to sheathe the paper in a plastic bag, except for those homes where the sprinklers come on early.

Summer weeknight means no chill from driving with the window down and no heavy Sunday papers.

No traffic means you can swiftly make the rounds. Familiar route means no peering out, looking for address numbers hung from dimly lit porch walls or painted onto curbs but obscured by parked cars.

When Angela started throwing the Register, delivery took place in daylight.

That was before the Register became what we call a “true a.m.,” meaning the paper is out before most readers are awake. Back then it was easier to read addresses.

In those days, Angela would talk to more of her customers.

Now there’s just John, who waits outside his home on a corner in Napa Abajo.

He comes to the window and they exchange pleasantries. John is very likely the first subscriber to read the Napa Valley Register, every single day.

The headlights of Angela’s car swing into parking lots and driveways, surprising cats and crows.

Every night, she puts 35 hard miles on her rig.

She goes for the best car warranty she can get, because the miles she drives are hard ones.

The Napa Public Works Department may think it knows the quality of Napa roads, but Angela feels it in her bones.

Napa isn’t a troublesome town, but Angela carries pepper spray.

She’s been hounded by dogs and approached by strangers and alarmed by what she sees in alleys.

When she doesn’t have management scum interrogating her, she listens to a favorite Cirque de Soleil soundtrack or a good music station, either of which can speed her on her route, she says.

But she prefers talk radio for the company.

Here and there, Angela pops out of the car.

From the edge of the lawn she throws a copy of the Register over a second-story balcony.

It hits an apartment door and slides to the ground like a dead man in a cowboy movie.

The milkman doesn’t deliver anymore.

The iceman and the bread man are history.

Angela is still winging papers onto driveways and porches in the middle of the night, throwing righty out the passenger-side window at 18 miles an hour, her fingers wrapped in rubber bands.

“It takes a special breed to keep on doing this,” she says.

Note: Saturday was the Newspaper Association of America’s International Newspaper Carrier Day.