Pt 6 PO random thoughts. "Back when"

“Part 6, Post Office random thoughts”

L –R    J. R. Brazzell, J. E. (lil Frosty) Barclay, Joe E. Ward, Robert (Bob) Templeton, Billy Weatherford

Stanley (Ace) Griffin, Robert Edward Latta, Edward Truman Allison, J. D. (JD) Barclay,

Pete Halteman and Jerald Chandler. Vintage 60s.  Billy Morris Holland was absent that day.

Pete Halteman was my mentor.  He helped me when I was hired to stock shelves for John B. Evans and when I was hired at the Post Office.

Pete was also a scout leader and on weekends went on hikes with his troop.   Little did I know that I would do the same in years to come. 

Upon his death I was assigned to city route one full time.  Following in the steps of Pete was a monumental task.  He was so endeared to the people on the route.  Every day for years someone would still call me Pete.  Partly because of Pete and partly because of my dad, who was also called Pete, whichever it was such a compliment and great honor.  I never once corrected any of them for we kept the memory of both alive.

No reflection on the Post Office would be complete without mentioning my friend and coworker Truman Allison.

He was a big deer hunter and took a week each year to hunt with family further east.  We always teased him that every time he missed or did not see a deer he would buy a new deer rifle.

Truman also loved dove shooting.  I do not really consider this hunting but it is fun sport.  Jim Brummel spotted a small field south of town and had permission to shoot it.  It was a very small field and the doves were working it really well.  It was just right for three to five hunters. 

We had shot a few doves and I spotted a pigeon almost dove colored fly up the field and let it pass.  Truman shot it and yelled, “I just shot the biggest dove I have ever seen.”  We had a hard time convincing him that it was a dove colored pigeon.

He used to have someone’s big black lab following him called Sam.  Sam would take every step Truman did.  Sam was a car chaser and ran for my tires once and the spinner hub caps threw him head over heel but lucky did no serious damage.  We were cautioned by the PO not to make friends with dogs but if they befriended us we did not complain.  We loved dogs and they would protect us or distract other dogs which might not be so friendly.

Truman was retired Marine and Marine through and through and it would distress him if I wore a different uniform.  I always told him I would call and let him know what I was going to wear the next day if he wanted.  That did not float with him.  He really got shook up when I started wearing the short legged uniform with knee socks.  This was just not military.

He was an expert on flag etiquette and once when city hall put the flag out and upside down Truman knew this is a distress signal and went running in the door yelling, “What is the emergency, what is the emergency.”

Once he got really bad sick at Henry Featherstone`s drug store and would not let the ambulance take him to the hospital until they called someone from the PO to get his bag.  Several offered to take care of it but he was adamant.  The handling of the mail is only to be done by active employees.  Once relief showed up he let them load him in the ambulance.

I substituted for him once and when I got to one sweet old black lady`s house she asked me if there was a letter from her son in Vietnam.  She informed me that she was blind and Mr.  Allison always read the letters from her son.  From then on if I was subbing his route and if she had a letter from the son and she was not on the porch I would knock.  If she was home I read them to her.  She had a neighbor who read her mail for her but I think hearing it in a man’s voice made it mean more to her. 

There never will be a more dedicated employee than Truman Allison. 

Part 5, "Its Sunday go back to bed"

“Part 5 Post Office random thoughts”

Some things are too embarrassing to be told but they did happen.  I remember shortly after being hired and I was scheduled to substitute for Pete Halteman the coming week.  I woke up and looked at the clock and I was already late for work.  I jumped up and reached for a uniform.  Uh, Oh, none there.   Now I am not the bravest person around but my new job was in jeopardy here.  I pulled Frieda`s covers back a bit briskly and sort of shouted, “I am late for work and I have no uniform.”   Frieda looked me right in the eye without a smile or twinkle of the eye and said for me to go back to bed.  “It`s Sunday,” she said.

Years later I had a similar experience.  I always arrived at my house about lunch time so I ate there.   I would eat in front of the TV with the news on.  On this particular day I dropped off to sleep.  When I woke up it was dark outside.  I had slept at least 6 hours and no one had called or woke me.  Then luckily I woke up in bed at two am.   This one I had three or four times.

One time when Joe Ward bought a brand new car someone, (Now I am not calling Jerald Chandler`s name), brought in a smoke bomb and he and I put it on Joe`s new car.  We were all watching when he cranked the car and it whistled and smoked.  Now this was not just a little smoke, it was big.  He jumped out and raised the hood and I do not think he was a happy camper.  He sure did not like our guffaws.  Joe was one of those special people to work with.

Ed Latta was cold natured, I mean really cold natured.  When we moved to the federal building the thermostats had locked covers over them.  Now they had to have vent holes so we use a straightened out paper clip with a hook on one end to move the control down in summer.   Ed would get cold and get his key and readjust it.  We would just pull out another paper clip.   Ed finally gave up and started wearing long sleeve turtle neck sweaters.  He knew we were changing it but I don`t think he knew how.

A carrier really gets attached to the families on the route and especially the kids.  Many of those, who grew up on the route that I carried for twenty two years, I have found on facebook and still keep up with them.

I will never forget when the USPS upper management sent me a Ford Pinto.  Their reasoning was that as, I could park it at intersections and walk in four directions, I could carry the route faster with the car and then they added more for me to deliver.  Two years later they took the cars away from us.  They said that as I no longer had to fool with the car I could carry more in less time and they were adding more deliveries to me.  My response this time was,  “Would you prefer to settle this in arbitration or court it does not much matter to me which and my congressman and senator will be informed of what has been done to me.  Results were no change this time.  Reminds me of President Reagan`s saying. “Ten most fearsome words are, I`m from the government and I am here to help.” Well something like that.

I was hired in 1964-5 when it was still the Post Office Dept. and it was a different world.  The pay was not so good but there was job security and the company and the employees shared some respect.  It was after the Post Office reorganization act that it started downhill.  

I remember lots of days with bad weather and we were off we would go in to help sort mail for a little while.  This did not take any time from the carriers and gave them a head start on extremely hot, cold, in fact any in climate weather.  After I quit the city route for a maintenance job on a lot of heavy mail days or bad weather Jerald Chandler, the Postmaster and I would take parts of each route to help the carriers.  It was fun just to go to work with people in labor and management respecting each other.  It was like a happy family group.

Now the carriers and clerks may start the day at home and then be sent twenty to fifty miles to work an unfamiliar job.  Having to carry a route and half of another and often getting off way after dark is the pits and unconscionable in bad weather.  The mail is being sorted and routed for the carriers out of town where they do not know the routes or really care.  We once delivered a magazine to a lady with a gibberish name and street.  The magazine employee had the hands over one character on a qwerty keyboard.  We delivered it for a year.  Employees in Evansville or even Paducah are not going to do this.

  The union is looking out for their leadership and the USPS is trying to destroy a tradition started by Benjamin Franklin after an act of congress.   I am sad to see the company I worked for, for thirty five years, destroyed.  I painted a sign for our office that said, Service Is Our Only Product, sadly that is no longer so. 

I have a feeling that the customers still interact favorably as they always have.  They make the job much more bearable.

“John B. Evans Role Model”

I had so many role models growing up and none more so that John B. Evans.  Our mom was a clerk in his grocery store for several years and I spent no little amount of time there. 

He gave me a job as stock clerk when I could only reach half way up the shelves.  Pete Halteman or Bobby Turner would stock the upper shelves.  Those two are role model stories on their own.  Both such giving, caring men I was so fortunate to have as a part of my growing up.

I did have a few jobs that as an eight or nine year old I could do.  I cleaned and oiled the floors and washed windows, big windows.  I would draw a gallon or two of kerosene for customers who cooked with kerosene as well.

Probably the one job I did well was candling eggs.  I imagine it is called candling from originally using candle light.  He had a dark spot in the storage room and a tin box that had a small hole in it to place the egg on.  I would quickly and carefully roll the egg with the fat end in the hole and the light bulb inside would show a fair view of the inside.  I could see if the open area would move freely, if not it was bad. I could see if the egg was cracked or the white was bloody.  Sometimes there would be a baby chick but not often.  He bought eggs from individual families who had free range chickens and they were almost always fresh and very few were bad.  Some were bought off the wholesale trucks, but the quality was not as good.

Eggs are not like people.  With them it is easy to tell a good egg from a bad egg.  Yeah, I know bad pun intended.

When I turned twelve he had me apply for a Social Security card and officially put me on payroll.  By then I was clerking in the afternoon and Saturday.  When school was out I put in several hours a week.

As I got older I realized that in the beginning I was put to work because we could not afford a sitter.  He was that kind of person….

He was too big hearted for his own good.  I saw people who out of work would ask and receive credit for months.  Some returned and settled up and remained customers but a considerable number would not.  Instead they would stiff John B and start trading at one of the several grocery stores in town.  I saw a few of those who having hit hard times again, would come back to him begging.  I doubt he would have let them have credit again but he was so sympathetic to the wives and children that, yes, he extended credit again.

It is my guess that when this kind man passed, he left Evelyn with a large army trunk full of bad credit slips.

"Lady in Red" or “Another angel in heaven”

If G_d makes angels of humans then I know one who is wearing a red blouse and black pants with her wings.

Growing up she was the go to for me and many of my friends.  I think she lived her whole life to doing for others.

She was an avid seamstress and worked for a long time at Merit Clothing in Mayfield.

When I was small I was embarrassed when other mothers would roll the collar of my shirt to see the logo for they wanted to by some for their child.  Later I could not contain my pride.  I had a couple of T`s that said “Clinton Milling Co.” on the back or front.  Years later she made her own pattern and made a suit for my nephew because they could not find one small enough.

She and Vara Yates could out crappie fish just about any two men and she could shoot a rifle with anyone.  I did not know this until one day we were fishing off of the west bank of Fish Lake and I had my 22 which always accompanied me back then. 

She spotted a cottonmouth in a bush right beside where we were fishing and at 20 feet he became suddenly headless.  I knew then why my dad never disagreed with her.

When I was working for my dad she would ask at breakfast what we wanted for lunch and supper and if we all gave a different preference she usually fixed all three.  She knew that we would eat whatever she cooked for it would be delicious but she just liked to please folks.

Years later she went to work at the bulk plant with my dad.  He, Tommie and I would all tell her that it took a good woman to run a business and three households.  But that is all it was, a joke.

She, like Lois Beck was always prepared for any number at mealtime for she never knew how many we would bring home.  I think she loved it.

She would help out at the Mission House in her later years and I do not know of a thing she enjoyed more her whole life except maybe her grand kids and greatgrand kids.  She had a spell with her heart at the Mission House once and Lula Belle called me and said she would not let them call an ambulance for she did not want to leave them.  I had to run down there to try but in the end it was Lula Belle who convinced her to go and I had to promise that my little doctor would see her if she was admitted.  She thought he was the stuff.

I can`t say as much about her as the grand kids did in this letter. I think my granddaughter Kristin wrote it for all of them.  Nick was still waiting to join the family when it was written.  She drove to Mayfield every day to baby sit when they were little and then some. 

My dad had been bitten by a cottonmouth and they hated snakes and would call me to get rid of one that climbed into a flower pot on her porch to wait for birds to light in the lattes.   I would catch them and take them down into the field and let them go.  I always assured her that I killed it.  I am sure I carried off the same chicken snake several times.  If it had been anywhere but in flowers it would have succumbed to the fate of her mean garden hoe.  She nearly ruined my grand-kids teaching them how to properly dispatch a snake with a garden hoe.

“H. Poe & Son, Clinton, Ky.”"

"Vicky Carter, this one is for you."

          One evening when I was stationed at Ft. Benning, Ga., some of us decided to go to Columbus, Ga. for a bit of RnR as troops will do on occasion.

          A ways out of Columbus we were going down a grade to a long straightaway and in the far distance we could see a semi coming our way.  I guessed it was headed for Atlanta and the stock yards.  No idea why that way.  Anyway I pretended to read the sign on front of the trailer knowing Harry had his trailers special lit and I said "H Poe & Son, Clinton, Ky. nice rig."  Well naturally they did not believe me so wagers were made.  Do not remember the amount but enough to make a difference to a GI.  When we got near it and they could read the sigh they thought I had the best eyes in the country.    Oh yes!  I kept the money.  They would have and I was not about to tell them that I was from Clinton and knew that Harry had his trailer lights specially configured and with a lit sign in the front of the trailer.