As a young boy, I sometimes traveled the country roads with my dad. He was a rural mail carrier, and on Saturdays he would ask me to go with him. Driving through the countryside was always an adventure: There were animals to see, people to visit, and chocolate cookies if you knew where to stop, and Dad did.
In the spring, Dad delivered boxes full of baby chickens, and when I was a boy it was such fun to stick your fingers through one of the holes of the boxes and let the baby birds peck on your fingers.
On Dad's final day of work, it took him well into the evening to complete his rounds because at least one member from each family was waiting at their mailboxes to thank him for his friendship and his years of service. "Two hundred and nineteen mailboxes on my route," he used to say, "and a story at every one." A young girl wrote letters but had no stamps, so she left a few buttons on the envelope in the mailbox; Dad paid for the stamps. On cold days Dad might find one of his customers waiting for him with a cup of hot chocolate.
A dozen years ago, when I traveled back to my hometown on the sad occasion of Dad's death, the mailboxes along the way reminded me of some of his stories. I thought I knew them all, but that wasn't the case.
As I drove home, I noticed two lamp poles, one on each side of the street. When my dad was around, those poles supported wooden boxes about four feet off the ground. One box was painted green, and the other was red, and each had a long narrow hole at the top with white lettering: SANTA CLAUS, NORTH POLE. For years children had dropped letters to Santa through those holes.
While Mom and I were sitting at the kitchen table I heard footsteps. There, at the door, stood Frank Townsend, Dad's postmaster and great friend for many years. So we all sat down at the table and began to tell stories.
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Frank asked my mother, "What are we going to do about the letters this Christmas?"
……
I remembered Dad was busy delivering piles of letters before Christmas each year.
