A hurricane takes on new meaning when the mail can’t get through. And you are already out of your medication. 11/4/92 – JDW, a mailman’s son.
Rain hammered the pavement. Blustery splashes bouncing. Street corners flooded. Tree branches clattered to the ground. Drenching cold. Brrr.
You would have to be some kind of nut to be outside in weather like this.
Or a mailman.
Mailperson, for you ladies.
Hammered by months of negative political advertising, frequently betrayed by blow-dried blowhards, often led by larcenous lying losers, sometimes we need to be reminded: THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE WORKS.
In a world of unfulfilled promises, the Post Office still delivers. Buried in anti-government rhetoric, the Portland Division processed over two BILLION pieces of mail this year.
“People on my route are like a second family to me,” veteran letter carrier Dave McGann said as he leaned into the biting wind. “When they hurt, I hurt.”
On this day, McGann is delivering property tax assessments to little old ladies on fixed incomes, bills to single-parent households, letters from soldiers overseas, loveletters, postcards, sales bulletins. THIS WEEK Magazine. More bills. Junk mail. Whatever.
The fast-striding, greyhound-lean McGann has worked as a mailman for 31 years. His feet have never bothered him. He delivers mail on the same St. John’s route where he delivered the daily paper as a kid. Twenty blocks, 450 stops, five days a week.
The average mailman lives six years longer than the rest of us. McGann hasn’t taken a sick day in years. No matter what the weather.
“I look forward to getting up and going to work,” McGann said. “I enjoy getting the job done. “I just like it. Sometimes the pouch gets heavy, but it’s a good, clean way to make a living. Grandpa carried mail during the depression when others were out of work. Mom was a postal clerk. I grew up in the post office. It’s a respected profession.”
Just then a big dog’s big bark startles the air. “Don’t worry about old King there,” McGann says. “He’s a good guy.” A can of mace is clipped to Dave’s pouch. He has been bitten, sure. “I’ve been lucky, I’ve never had to go to the hospital.
“Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this,” McGann confides. “Years ago, I had a dog come after me. Tuffy was its name. I was really scared of that dog for years, even though he was chained.
You see, Tuffy would run at me, and the chain might hold. Sometimes the chain would break. Tore a hole in my leather bag once. Scary dog.
“One day, I saw Tuffy running toward me, and just as he got to the end of his rope, he dropped dead.”
Seven a.m. Lake Oswego. Tony suburbs. A lot of shiny magazines and plenty of mail order catalogs.
Still dark. Cheery Ana Alvarado sorts mail before heading out on her mounted route, serving 400 homes. “It’s not uncommon for me to sort 10 to 20 linear feet of mail.” She doesn’t mean end-to-end, either. “On a heavy day, I might do as much as 30 feet.”
The United States Postal Service is a good place to be a woman. Nearly a dozen years a mailperson, Alvarado was originally attracted by the security of a government job. Good pay, good benefits, good retirement. “There’s room for upward mobility,” Ana notes, “although I haven’t done much of that because I’m happy where I am.”
A single mother, Alvarado doesn’t see her daughter carrying letters. “No, she’s going to college.”
With calls for privatizing the Postal Service, Alvarado is concerned about the future. “It’s real scary,” she admits. “Sure, I worry about my job. I truly don’t believe private business will provide the level of service the Post Office provides. With the billions of pieces we deliver, forty percent of all the world’s mail, we do a great job.”
In the Lake Oswego post office, in the employees’ bathrooms, a sign on the mirror: “You Are Looking At The Person Responsible For Your Own Safety.”
The U.S. Postal Service is NOT, by the way, subsidized by your tax dollars. NOT subsidized.
The Southeast Portland station is humming. Totally different ambiance than the burbs. A controlled frenzy of activity. Ninety-four percent of ALL mail is business-related.
Nancy Scudder once taught English as a Second Language to refugees. A letter carrier nearly nine years now, Scudder likes the exercise, working outside, getting away from the phone.
“Being a part of a community is the most exciting part of the job. I sound like a Hallmark card, but it’s true,” Nancy says. “I watch babies being born, going off to school….
“New dogs.”
A smile crosses her face when asked about the folks on her route. “People thank me for Christmas presents like I’m the one who paid for them.”
Milton Hoch, a red-bearded Viking of a man, is impressive in stature. They call him, Mister Mailman. The kind of guy neighborhood kids look up to.
A distinguished veteran, wounded four times in Vietnam, a single parent with two children, Milt was simply looking for a steady job. Where nobody was shooting at him. He’s been a letter carrier for 13 years.
Hoch was instrumental in forming CARRIERLINK. CARRIERLINK is a free service provided to the elderly and handicapped, offering homebound adults in Multnomah County an extra measure of security. (For additional information, call 229-7348.)
“The letter carrier may be a customer’s only contact to the outside world. In an increasingly impersonal world, a letter carrier is always there for you,” Hoch says. “I spend more daylight hours on my route than I do at home, so the route is my community.”
Letter carrier Chuck Tune saved a life. Mailman as Superhero.
“A couple of years ago, around Thanksgiving, running a little behind, I saw smoke pouring out of an apartment building, 4745 Southeast Hawthorne,” Tune remembers. “Went inside, smoke everywhere, pitch black. Flames. Flames. I just reacted. Although I couldn’t help thinking at the time, maybe what I was doing wasn’t too smart. But, I just reacted. Found one elderly crippled fellow. Kicked his door in. Got him out.”
Chuck Tune is the man behind CHILDLINK. “About the time young Lee Isley disappeared, I got to thinking about all those carriers on the streets in recognizable red, white and blue vehicles,” Tune recalls. “I imagined a mobile block home situation. Most carriers know all the kids by name. CHILDLINK teaches children a letter carrier is someone they can trust, someone kids can go to when they get in trouble.”
If you don’t like people, you wouldn’t want to be a letter carrier. Thirty-one years a postal worker, Vern Brazzle loves people.
Working out of the Holladay Park station, the warmly-dressed Brazzle delivers to 300 or so homes in an upper-middle class neighborhood (“more middle than upper”) in Northeast Portland.
“You are part of their life, like it or not,” Brazzle says with a laugh. “It’s true. I pray for them and they pray for me.”
Brazzle, although he doesn’t have one himself, likes dogs, too. Nipped just once, a “long, long” time ago, the veteran carrier has a unique style of canine control. “If it’s a bad dog and I think I might annoy him, I sing to them.”
“Just A Closer Walk With Thee works best,” says Brazzle.
Downtown. Still gray. Still raining. Transients with no forwarding address huddle nearby.
At the Main P.O., sorting mail is an around-the-clock job. A letter carrier might handle 750 pieces in an hour. Some machines sort as many as eleven letters per second. The Portland Division made 1,620,818 deliveries last year. 735,161 address changes.
Scott Blau and Janice Degermark, both carriers for twenty years, are now part of a joint labor-management effort to improve the quality of work life for postal workers.
Apparently, you can take a carrier off a route, but you can’t take a route off a carrier.
“I enjoy the sense of being on my own,” Blau responded when asked what he liked about delivering the mail. “It’s self-managed. There’s an opportunity to do something extra, to make a difference in the community.”
“I enjoy the responsibility. I figure the two people who know the most about you are the mailman and the garbage man,” says Degermark. “One knows what’s going into the house, the other knows what’s coming out.”
Asked if there was anything special the public ought to know about letter carriers, Degermark had this to say, “EVEN GRANDMAS CARRY THE MAIL.”
Dennis “Elwood” Hickox once wore shorts in winter and delivered letters at a Southern California beach to Harriet (Mrs. Ozzie) Nelson and O.J. Simpson. Now a permanent temporary in Gresham, filling in on whatever route is available, Elwood actually loves his job.
“Sure, why not? It’s an honorable trade. Outside for half a day, providing a service to the public, dealing with the public,” explains Hickox. “You see kids’ faces light up when a package arrives. The crazy things people say.”
“‘What is it?,’ people ask, when I hand them a letter. ‘I haven’t had time to read it,’ I usually tell them.
“‘No bills, no junk,’ I must hear that five or ten times a day.
“‘He won’t bite,’ is another good one. I usually wait for the dog to tell me.”
Husband, father of three young children, Hickox is an extra set of eyes in the neighborhood. “Letter carriers know who belongs, and who doesn’t.”
Hickox had some things to get off his chest. Gently. “Before I started working for the Post Office, I took the mailman for granted. It’s hard work. It’s responsible work. Nobody feels worse about a misdelivered piece of mail than the mailman. If somebody doesn’t want mail, we can’t hold it. We have no choice. We don’t mail folks this stuff, we just deliver it. The mail goes out the same day the carrier first sees it. ‘Today’s mail today’ is our motto. People don’t realize, for 29 cents, a letter with a forwarding address can cross the country twice, go 6,000 miles. All that for just 29 cents. It’s a heckuva bargain.
“I could also recommend people get to know their mailman,” says Hickox. Adding, “All in all, there’s a lot of people here busting their, ummm, butts to get the job done.”
The letter carrier is the service in Postal Service. The mailman is really a common thread which runs through every neighborhood in the country. Mending us together.
Six days a week, Americans get the mail delivered directly to them. It’s an astonishing luxury really, not to be taken lightly. Just something you might think about before the holidays.
Before the weather gets really bad.
“Neither rain, nor sleet, nor hail, nor monsoon, nor tropical storm, no hurricane nor tornado, no thundershowers nor sizzling drought, no intermittent drizzle nor avalanche, nor fog or dog, will stay the mailperson from his appointed rounds.” Something like that.
Finally. “Current Resident” does mean you.