Delivering the mail

Back in the day, it was Life, Look and The Saturday Evening Post, crammed into the bag, and they were heavy. We didn’t have scooters, either. Rain, snow, dark of night, they were all foot routes.

We had plenty of compensation, though. People loved to see us coming. We might have a letter for them. It was a good feeling to slip a couple of letters into the mailbox.

These days, it’s duplicate copies to most households of catalogues from L.L. Bean, Land’s End, Victoria’s Secret, Macy’s, whoever. But the letter compensation is dwindling. People don’t write letters anymore. They send emails. The Post Office says “personal mail” has dropped off by a third in the last 25 years, to an average of 1.1 personal letter per household per week. That sounds high to me. Our household gets about one personal letter for every 1,267 Victoria’s Secret catalogues.

Our mailman can’t get much joy from that. With the possible exception of the Sears catalogue, there is not one thing (even scooters) about today’s mail carrier that I would choose over my days, 40 years ago, on the routes.

Being a mailman was the second-best job I ever had. Being an essay writer is the best. Teaching is so noble, and I wish it came in at least second, but it only finishes third, because there is so damn much work.

I was a substitute carrier, which made it even better. Something new every day. I got different routes every day. Never knew where the dogs were. Never knew what people would leave me in their mailboxes, or give to me as they greeted me at their screen doors. It was fun, and poignant, seeing the doubt flicker in their sweet faces as they stood there at the screen door and saw me arrive.

“Where’s Jim?” they would say, looking forward to their regular carrier. “Off today,” I would say, smiling. “Oh,” they would say, disappointed, suddenly self-conscious about the couple of peaches, or apricots, in their hands. “Well. Here,” they would always say, and push open the screen and hand over the fruit, or muffin, or pie. I would always take it, of course, even if it were only a couple of shriveled apricots (not my favorites, even without the worm holes).

The letters were the best. Because we carried so much mail, carriers knew things about the mail that an ordinary citizen might never see in a lifetime. Not everybody on the route received a letter that also, on the back of the envelope, carried a message for the carrier: “Postman, postman, don’t be slow; be like Elvis, go man, go.” What letter carrier with a heart wouldn’t practice diligent and dedication, in rain, snow or dark of night, to speed this letter from an author so eager to see it delivered into the hands of the recipient?

You just don’t get that in an email. Yes, I know you can send attachments with emails, or email a greeting card complete with motion and music, but it is not nearly the same as a letter I delivered one day from someone with artist’s skills vacationing in Paris, who had sketched, on front and back of the envelope, in a rainbow of colored pencil, a map, complete with features (tower, arc, etc.) of central Paris.

You could tell the love letters, because they were thick. Three pages (you could tell two pages from three, or four, by the feel) on average, all hand-written. Compare that as a labor of love to an email, however amorous. And when the letter was marked, across the flap on the back, “S.W.A.K.,” you knew it had been sealed with a kiss, the sender’s lip DNA right there on the envelope. You can’t kiss an email, and “Sealed With A Keystroke” has none of the fire of the old analog technique. You young hipsters who sneer at stationery, envelopes and longhand, you might think about that.