My US Male Story

On Monday, November 13th, both my husband's birthday and our 9th wedding anniversary hit.  That was the same day the poor guy started the Grizzly Flats/Somerset/Happy Valley mail route.  Since he went into the military when he was 17, he has worked in the fields of telecommunications and low voltage electrical installation. He goes into a building (usually new construction) and installs the fire alarm systems, security systems and such.  He also works on things like security systems for prisons, nurse call systems for hospitals, home theater installation, and other electrical systems. 

My point is that he has not changed the basic theme of his career in all those years.  It has always involved some kind of related activity, whether it was activating cell phone towers, splicing fiber optic cable or installing security camera into the rock quarry.  This is the first time that he has jumped completely out of the frying pan and into the fire, taking on a job about which he knew exactly nothing.  He knows his ABC's and numbers.  He can drive.  That is what prepared him to deliver the mail. 

The ladies, Ruth and Chris, who delivered the mail before us were very overtaxed.  A lot of people don't know that before they ever got to Grizzly Flats and Somerset to start working on our mail, they had already delivered mail to Placerville.  Sixteen years gives you a certain flow, I'm sure, but 16 years ago, there weren't nearly as many people living in Grizzly Flats and Somerset as there are now and too many boxes are just too many boxes no matter how good you are at what you do. The end result was that there was too much mail and not enough hours, so a lot of the "bulk mail," (that's the mail you get in your mailbox that you really don't want, sort of the "spam" of mail delivery) was put aside to enable the first class mail (that's the important stuff you really do what to receive) to be delivered.

All day long that first day, it poured rain.  He sorted and sorted and sorted mail into the 200+ boxes at the Somerset post office.  What keeps it interesting is that the boxes (a wall of little cubbies at the post office) are arranged not by any kind of alphabetical or numerical order, but in the order that the boxes appear on the route as you are driving.  So you get a giant bin of first class mail in front of you.  You pick up one envelope.  You look at the address/name.  You go to the area of the cubbies that should have that address because all of the addresses around that area are there, then you case around until you find it and jam it into the cubby.  Then you pick up another envelope.  Then you pick up another one.  And another one. 

It goes faster as you get to know the numbers and names better, but on that first day, Eric knew no numbers and Eric knew no names. 

After you have filled up all of the cubbies with mail and emptied your (many) bins, you rubber band up everyone's mail and place them in the delivery bins, all staggered so you can tell what comes next and off you go up the route. 

Believe it or not, when you drive up the mountain as a "civilian," you don't pay much attention to where mailboxes are located or even if there are mailboxes around.  "Oh look, there's one with a rainbow on it."  "Oh look, there's one with a target on it, haha."  Beyond that, nobody really cares or knows where the mailbox is unless you have to get mail into it or out of it.  So here goes Eric after hours of mind-melting sorting, creeping along the road in the pouring rain, looking for what mailbox comes next. 

You'd be surprised how many mailboxes do not have numbers on them.  Mailfolk are supposed to intuit the address of the house attached to it.  (If you're a non-number having person, fer shame!)  Some have partial numbers.  Since the mail is arranged in the bin according to what mailbox is next, you have some idea of what mail goes where, but if you have 1 letter and three unmarked mailboxes in a row, it's impossible to tell where it goes.  Most of the mailboxes are not in front of the house with the address on it, so that's not much of a help.  The boxes are not really in any kind of numerical order on the route, as they would be on a city route, because people pretty much jam the mailbox into the ground at the end of pile of mailboxes, regardless of where their address falls.  It's not like they are going to uproot someone else's mailbox just because it's in the space where theirs should have gone!

He finally made it up to the Grizzly Flats Post Office around 5:30 or so and had to ask Susan to come back after she'd gotten off work to open up for him to finish.  He then had to sort all the mail at Grizzly Flats (only about 50 or so cubbies there) and deliver it, which runs down Grizzly Flat Road (from where it meets Sciaroni and you make a left to Leoni Meadows) all the way to Logan's Grade, down Logan's Grade and all the way back to Somerset again, delivering to the mailboxes on the right side of the road.

He stopped by the house (rain still pouring) around 7pm and I left with him to help out.  We put the last letter in the last mailbox at 8:30pm and limped back up the mountain.  For the first time in forever (likely from riding in the back seat), I was completely laid out with motion sickness.  It held on too for at least an hour after I was out of the car.

Eric was completely laid out.  He'd taken quite a pay cut to bid the mail carrier job and we weren't 100% how we would make up the difference, but we knew it was killing his spirit to drive to and from Sacramento every day as he had for the past 3 years, working in the crass and crude construction environment.  He loves this mountain more than anyone I know and this would not only let him support his family and never leave the mountain, but would also immediately make him a valuable part of the community.  He'd confidently walked in and quit his job of 3 years the previous Friday, walking away from security and enough money for us to live on.  Now, he was looking at working hours and hours more in a day than he had for his previous job, plus making less money.

He went to bed a beaten man.  One of the things he told me is that it had been a long time since he'd been paid for what he could do rather than what he knows.

The next day, he shaved 3 hours off of his time (no rain helped). 

The next day, I went to Grizzly Flats ahead of him and sorted the mail in advance.  That cut back even more time for him.

The next day, I started delivering the uppermost part of the route and saved him even more time.

He has gotten so much faster at the mail sorting now and knowing where the mailboxes are is absolutely a lifesaver versus looking for them with a flashlight (failing flashlight) as we did that first night.

Between the two of us, we have gotten the boxes and boxes and boxes of bulk mail that were left behind delivered.  If you got way, way too much mail in the past week, that's why.  I am able to get the top side of Grizzly Flats delivered by noon and Eric has aced Somerset to the point that he can get up here by 1-2 or so and get the remainder of the mail delivered by 3. 

I can definitely see the differences in him as the stink and funk of the city fall away.  Last night, after delivering the mail, he went to Sacramento to do a side job that would help fill in the financial gaps and it was so much easier for him to commute knowing he wouldn't have to do it the next day and the next day and the next day.  There is a lightness to him that wasn't there before and it's as though the weight of the world is off his shoulders.

His contract is only for 18 months, but for myself, I hope it is renewed.  It's good for him.  It's good for me too.

I was surprised by how much I enjoy doing the mail.  It is familiar to me because I was a librarian for many years and it's the same thing:  numbers, names and sorting.  There is a certain zen quality to it and for this old Virgo woman, it's nice to see things going into their proper place. 

As a wife and mom, doing the mail provides me with something I can't get anywhere else:  as sense of finality and completion.  I go to the Post Office and when I leave an hour or so later, I have successfully completed a task.  I'll never see those same letters again after I put them into the mailbox.  It has a beginning, a middle and an end.  At the end, the cubbies are all clean, the bins are all empty and I can go to sleep that night saying I did something to its completion.

Housecleaning, as anyone who has done it knows,  is a thankless, never-ending process.  You wash the same dishes over and over and over.  You cook the same food over and over and over.  Mop the same floors. Wash the same clothes.  Clean the same toilet. Polish the same furniture. It is like sweeping a dirt floor; it never, never ever effin ends. 

Doing the mail not only helps Eric have the better part of the afternoons free to work on the other side of his career, but also gives me something 6 days a week that actually ends. 

Best to ya,