The handwriting is not on the wall; it’s on the computer, the cell phone, the tablet, Twitter, Facebook, Linked-In and Skype. Technology is rapidly making the mailman obsolete.
Reflecting on this brings up memories of Al Zooks, the mailman of my suburban youth. As I remember him, Al was a grizzled old guy: unshaven, white-haired, mostly bald, and sporting a semi-toothless grin. He’d drive up and down my street dropping mail into mailboxes, and chatting with most everyone he’d meet along the way. I know this because sometimes he’d pick me up as I walked home from school and let me ride along with him in his mail truck.
“Hey, Larry!” he’d shout, “Y’wanna ride?” Al’s New York accent was as thick as Molasses. I’d hop in and sit on a pile of mail – seatbelts, air-bags and Ralph Nader were many years in the future. “Sow’s the folks?” Al would ask, grinning. His missing teeth fascinated me. “Mom ok?” Al was my mother’s mailman when she was a little girl in nearby New Rochelle many years before. I imagined her sitting on a pile of mail in his truck too. In my youth trusting people you knew just seemed normal.
Around the holidays Al would attach a small plow to the front of his truck, and when we’d had a good snowfall he’d put on chains and plow a path down the driveways so he could hand-deliver the mail without trudging through the snow. He’d ring the bell on a Saturday, and my dad would answer the door. “Hey Norm!” Al would bellow, “Happy Holidays!” My father would invite him in. “Rye, right?” my dad would ask, and he didn’t mean rye bread. Al would nod his head and grin.
We’d all go into the hot kitchen where my mother would be at the stove. “Hi ya, doll!” Al would shout, and mother would give him a big hug. “Howaya?” We’d sit at the kitchen table and my dad would pour Al his shot of Rye. He’d down it with a big “Ahhh,” smack his lips and wink at me. Like our neighbors, my father would hand him an envelope with twenty bucks in it. In this way Al made his rounds, reaffirming old relationships, supplementing his salary and getting progressively more intoxicated. It was glorious.
Nowadays kids can’t ride in mail trucks, drinking and driving don’t mix, tips are not allowed, trust is in short supply, and at my house I never know from day-to-day who delivers my mail because my street has no permanently assigned mailman. The U.S. Post Office wants to eliminate Saturday delivery altogether, and most of the mail we get is junk. Our bills are paid online or by direct withdrawal, and it seems the ratio of meaningful mail to mail-order catalogs tipped in favor of catalogs quite some time ago.
Before technology, mail bound us together as a people and a nation. Though short-lived due to the telegraph, tales of the pony-express remain a romantic expression of the selfless mail-carrier braving danger and the elements to make sure people could hear from their loved ones. The personal, human to human quality of life is rapidly receding into digital networks of ever-more disembodied communication technology. The future of hand delivered mail? “Fuggedaboudit!.”
Thinking of you, Al.
