My “Breaktime Bridge” on Old Cutler Road in South Florida
Nostalgia ain’t the same as it used to be. With each year I add on, the sentiment seems to gain in strength.
Live long enough, and you’ll discover that—almost inadvertently—you’ve managed to traipse through various heydays. And contemplation of them in retrospect can prove rather pleasant.
For instance, I became a Deadhead at precisely the proper moment to attend the last Grateful Dead live concerts at: The Greek theater in Berkeley, the Kaiser Auditorium and the Coliseum in Oakland, The Frost at Stanford and Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View. All while ol’ Jerry himself was still cookin’ away on lead guitar and croonin’ into the mic.
Lately, I’ve also realized that I ought to relish a much earlier heyday, in a far more prosaic arena: at the United States Post Office. From age 18 through 21, I worked summers as a Temporary Substitute Carrier out of the towns of Perrine and Cutler Ridge in South Florida. As one of the sweetest gigs I’ve ever enjoyed, the period wins my stamp of approval. Took me a while to feel like I had that job truly licked, though.
GETTING A BUM STEER
I entered via a Civil Service exam as I recall, which I aced; and a driving test, which (at first) I didn’t. My tester was a skinny, jittery, elderly, gum-snapping martinet whose eyes narrowed at the sight of my Elvis sideburns and hair that dangled a half-inch over my shirt collar. He needed to ensure no radical, bud-huffing leftie snatched a good job away from any loyal, patriotic American youth, so, he faulted me on tiny infractions like failing to stare into a rear-view mirror quite long enough.
Luckily, I scored a second chance with a different tester, and over-prepared for him by cranking my OCD-OS (obsessive-compulsive operating system) up to 11. Whereupon, I passed.
Next, and nearly too soon, came a day when I was forced to hit the streets with a mail truck actually laden with stacks of mail. And then deliver each piece to the right address. I gazed down at multiple trays packed with hundreds of envelopes tied-off with rubber bands and felt a burst of panic.
But I unfolded a paper street map, located the intersection where it appeared my route could start, exited the vehicle, found a house number that matched the top envelope… And then the next… And the next. By the time I popped my second rubber band, I knew this job would be a snap.
MORE REASONS TO APPLAUD BEN FRANKLIN
Good ol’ Ben Franklin was named first Postmaster General of the United States at the Second Continental Congress, just after the revolution kicked off in 1775. He was absolutely the right guy for the job, since he’d served the British Crown in that same role till he was dismissed in 1774 for seeming too “sympathetic” to those rebellious colonists. (Has a charge ever been aimed at anyone with a greater accuracy?)
But by then, he’d been managing postal services for more than 30 years, sponsoring innovations like printing in newspapers the names of people who had letters waiting for them at post offices, and imposing a penny fee if they wished to have those letters delivered to their homes. My favorite move—which underscored the man’s scientific, practical bent—was attaching an odometer to the axle of his carriage so that he could measure precise mileage between post offices and time deliveries accordingly.
To understand the importance of mail back in that day, you need to collect all the myriad ways we send and receive message and packages these days—everything from email, Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, WhatsApp and Substack to UPS, FedEx and even Amazon—and blend them into one basic service. Mail was the carrier of diplomacy, the bringer of news, of gossip, fulfiller of commerce, maintainer of bonds with family and friends, the communicator of history, enabler of governance, enhancer of management, communicator of philosophy, science and religion.
“SCRIBBLE, SCRIBBLE, SCRIBBLE, EH, MR. GIBBON?”
The Duke of Gloucester’s humorous crack to that eminent historian (Edward Gibbon had scrawled six volumes of “The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire” by 1789) held more than a germ of truth. In that era, no one typed or dictated or pressed a button to copy or print; you needed to dip your quill in an inkwell and try to perform legible calligraphy upon a blank page. Whether that was paper or parchment, none of the implements involved were cheap or easy to come by, and the writing process itself was tremendously time-consuming.
One engaged in substantial thought prior to embarking upon such an endeavor. This made every hand-written letter or document an item of value. Entrusting your result to a mail service that undertook to send it across oceans and continents required no small act of faith. Successful delivery often proved a highly consequential achievement.
That was why the U.S. Post Office was made a cabinet-level department at the get-go, and why it was granted a monopoly to ensure its solvency and efficiency. Mail service exerted a profound effect on every facet of human connection.
By the time your humble narrator began to cart wads of cards and letters to Florida neighborhoods some two centuries further on, snail-mail still bore a hefty clout. It was how people showed they cared for one another, how they sent and received bills and checks and licenses and so on. The fact that letters were more speedily and easily crafted by scribbling in cursive writing with a Bic ballpoint, or typing on an electric IBM Selectric, lessened the import of a stamped envelope not a whit.
A SMART SHOP IS A HAPPY SHOP
My humble work at the P.O. felt like a major star turn after all my previous summer gigs. These included digging ditches as a construction laborer, selling encyclopedias door-to-door, inhaling Formica dust in an engraving shop, and stacking pallets, loading semis, and driving a forklift at a fruit-packing plant.
A typical postal day began well before sunup, with me arriving to park my motorcycle on the loading dock, then I’d charge inside to start “casing” mail—which meant collecting a basket of letters and slotting them into pigeon holes with street numbers arranged in order of delivery. Once done, the mail was banded, arranged in trays, and brought out to the delivery van.
Whereupon the real marathon began. After my first faltering foray, I became a confident expert, jogging sidewalks, hopping hedges, and sprinting through each route at record speed—mainly, to take full advantage of the cool air of morning. However, my swift reduction of a route caused a problem with my co-workers.
I should take a moment to describe who those folks were. In their blue-to-gray outfits (much like postal workers wear today) we had an array of largely middle-aged people who ranged from Jinx, a graying single mom to three rambunctious teenagers, to Tall Tim, a hick from the hills of Tennessee with a serious vocal twang a pedal steel player might envy. These folks were highly experienced and greatly comfortable in their jobs, and teased and joshed one another constantly.
Which is why it startled me when Tim confronted me out on the loading dock one day. “Listen up, hoss… You aire comin’ back into this yere office way too soon.”
“I am?”
“See, deliverin’ a route is sposed to last four hours. No more, certainly not less.”
“Oh.”
“Just hafta pay a tad more ‘tenshun to what ya see goin’ on ‘round ya, ‘kay? Do thet, hoss, an’ ever’ lil’ thang gonna be awright.”
THE SEAL ON MY DEAL
Now, at that time—in the late 60s, early 70s—postal workers had just begun to organize around grievances over lousy pay, poor conditions and overwork. They were regularly accompanied by inspectors on routes to make sure deliveries were efficient, and if it looked like they could handle more, another 100 or so homes would be plopped onto to his-or-her route, with no appeal possible.
And should some hard-charging teenager make a given route look way-y too easy to a postmaster? Well, guess what—it could make the regular carrier appear to be a slacker. And for that, a stern remedy was swiftly applied. So, what can I say; I was forced to take Tall Tim’s tale into account on the way I managed my schedule.
I ought to also describe my own situation(s). At the time, I myself was enduring a fairly constant stream of oppression. At home, my father regularly supplied us with irrational outbursts as a flaming rage-a-holic. At school—a Catholic seminary where I was studying to be a priest—the entire operation seemed like a cookie-cutter mechanism designed to crank out cogs to comport in full with aims of the institution while accomplishing little else.
One example: priests in charge of each dorm were allowed to open all mail coming to the seminarians and read it first, in order to spot any pernicious prompt toward a rebellious or a heretical bent. Not only that, but our outgoing mail, whether to family or friends, had to be left unsealed in a box so it could also be scrutinized by our superiors prior to getting sent.
Our privacy wasn’t merely beside the point; it seemed to border on no points at all. Of the three main vows looming over us—poverty, chastity, and obedience—that last, by far, appeared most overwhelmingly valued.
Plus, I’d been spotted and ID’d as a possible trouble-maker early on, then threatened with expulsion by several priests on multiple occasions. However, I did wish to keep on going to the “sem,” for two main reasons: I could live 9 months out of the year some 40 miles away from my father; and the classic education I received there was manifestly unobtainable anywhere else in Florida. However, in order to remain, I had to appear to hew to the straight and narrow.
AH, BUT I WAS SO MUCH OLDER THEN
In short, at that point in my life, I experienced real difficulty in feeling like any sort of young person. That sentiment got spiked home whilst driving along my postal routes. I regularly went past a site on Old Cutler Road where a bridge arced over one of South Florida’s brand-new drainage canals. It was where many local teens would gather to swim and dive off the bridge.
Now, at the time, these canals had been sold to the public as a “flood control projects,” meant to ease our life during hurricanes or strings of tropic thunderstorms. In reality, they were meant to transform vast swaths of bog into farmland and housing development sites. While achieving this, they drained away a flood of the lifeblood of the Everglades—which, excepting for the newly designated national park, correspondingly shriveled.
However, when freshly dug, those canals did boast clean and gleaming limestone walls and they were filled with cool, pure, crystal-clear water. They appeared far more attractive than any swimming pool ever made, and soon became tempting sites for kids with spare time on their hands during their long and hot summers off.
The wide photo at the top of this newsletter shows how this very canal site and bridge appears today. To turn back the clock a few decades, imagine no houses anywhere around it, only groves of Australian pines on both banks, and this site populated by a bevy of young beauties in cut-off shorts and halter tops, courted by an immodest mob of lean, tanned lads in swimsuits.
I KNOW WHAT I DID THAT SUMMER
So. I could get my routes delivered in jig time. And I’d been convinced I wasn’t supposed to reappear at my office before 2 PM. How might I profitably, then, burn my own dose of spare daylight? An answer wasn’t long in coming. On a regular basis, I parked my mail truck deep in those Australian pine trees, removed shirt, shoes and socks, locked my truck, thrust the keys deep into a pocket of my pants, then joined that happy crew of splashing, diving, flirting youngsters.
The drop from the bridge railing to the usual water level was about 20 feet, which set a good stage for creativity. Most moves used were common ones—cannonballs, jackknives, can-openers, swan dives. To stand out, one needed to try something more distinctive. One of my specialties became performing a handstand on the bridge railing, followed by a forward flip toward the water; though I had to be careful not to over-rotate into a back-smack or belly-flop, which would ruin the effect as I crabbed painfully toward shore to the sound of laughter and hollered critiques.
My top stunt was a dive I’d invented on the spot, which I dubbed “the watermelon.” It was sort of an inverted cannonball. I’d perch atop the railing, leap off headfirst with all limbs spread, then at the last instant pull myself into a knot, duck my head, and rotate forward. Ideally, I’d hit the water with my shoulders and torso spinning, and knock out a broad, symmetrical fan of water from the point of impact.
When perfectly executed, that could score applause. Except, of course, from the kids I doused with the spray. And then, finally warmed with a glow of youth, I’d dress myself and head on back to the post office. Usually, my pants would be somewhat dry as I strolled in across the dock. No one ever made a comment about any stray droplets. Perhaps, observers imagined my dribbles stemmed from a different cause…
BUT THAT WAS THEN AND THIS IS NOW
During that period, I collected and saved valued letters—especially, thin, light airmail missives from a girlfriend traveling in Europe—and stashed them in a shoebox, to open and re-read periodically. I still have a file of major messages from and to relatives. What do people do with their most meaningful messages now? Does anyone store texts? I mean, besides the FBI, various AI snoops, or Palantir…?
The U.S. Postal Service, finally renamed in 1971 and charged with becoming financially self-supporting of course is still around. And it remains huge: with more than 33,000 offices and contract locations, 500,000 workers and a fleet of 235,000 vehicles. Yet, in many ways, the outfit seems like a shadow of its former self. The NY Times reports the Service delivered 112.5 billion pieces of mail in 2024, a total down by nearly half since 2006.
But its lingering importance is easy to miss or take for granted.
Since working there, I’ve lived in many small towns across the country where a rural post office can actually form the mainstay of a community. It’s where neighbors meet, catch up on news and gossip with a staffer across the counter, where the coin boxes for newspapers are still found, and where there’s sufficient traffic for a local entrepreneur to hope to create a wee café or grocery nearby. That’s why, every time postal execs try to save money by shuttering rural outposts, a vigorous outcry ensues that trashes the whole measure.
Since year 2000, legislative improvements have attempted to wipe out debt, reduce fiscal obligations and allow fresh business opportunities at post offices. In my view, such steps are so far insufficient! There’s no good reason why, in addition to handling the mail that yet flows, a post office itself can’t also be a café, a bank that specializes in transmitting remittances, a small lending library, a 7-11 style store, a computer portal and wireless hotspot. As well as a place to print color photos and offer comfy booths for playing chess, poker and dominos, and rooms for book readings, small concerts, and on and on. If a spot is to be a pivot point for a community, make it swing, I say!
FIRE THE RETRO ROCKETS, MAX!
For my part these days, I also seek to judo the rampant decline of first-class mail by continuing to use this system as much as I can, not less. Friends steadily receive notes and cards and letters from me, as often as not in envelopes stuffed with cartoons from newspapers and magazines. These pieces of mail prove all the more striking and meaningful since they’re now rare and special, and thus stand out from the swelling stream of commercial crap seeping into most mailboxes.
I also try to judo the junk mail too, and snip odd phrases out to make amusing collages on the back side of envelopes. My wife calls these, “ransom notes”—which they do indeed somewhat resemble.
Bottom line, I want the U.S. Post Office to not only endure but prosper, and reinvent itself in ways that would’ve made Ben Franklin grin. Not crumble, or be subsumed by some bland corporate entity that would reduce this noble concept of a public service into just one more form of lame exploitation.
I shall always remain grateful for that outfit awarding me a great job with meaningful work, fine companionship and reasonable pay—along with a well-earned opportunity to enjoy a dose of Vitamin F (meaning Fun) in the midst of my workday. Thanks to recognizing this as a possibility, I grew far more able to seize, some 20 years later, a chance to join the Dancing Bears at Frost.
And now, some 20 years after that, I remain on the lookout for any prime opportunity to frolic or play. After all, physical youth itself may be fleeting, but the urge for a dose of joyful immaturity can (and ought to!) last forever.