That Time I Went Postal

It was the summer of 1965 when I went postal when I screamed to high heaven and cried out.

The above photo has nothing to do with me or that era. Obviously. I was a summer employee at the United States Post Office in Boulder, Colorado thanks to the patronage position I got from US Congressman Roy Romer. Earlier that summer I worked as a lineman at the Jefferson County Airport. I fueled small general aviation airplanes. My job paid $1.00 per hour. I had a uniform. That in itself was a first for me. I respected my uniform and was appreciative to have a good paying job for that time. Earlier in my youth I sold all occasion cards door to door; sold Spudnuts door to door; and delivered furniture for Look Furniture Company in Denver. My pay ranged from free merchandise for selling cards, seventy-five cents for selling twelve dozen Spudnuts, and an eventual dollar an hour for delivering furniture.  My job at the airport paid $1 per hour and was a lateral move during the summer before I started college.

Denver experienced the worst flood in its history for four days in June 1965. Several helicopters flew out of the Jefferson County Airport (Jeffco) where I worked. Jeffco was a county airport located about twenty miles northwest of Denver. Several helicopters were using Jeffco for fueling during those four days. I remember the late afternoon when I drove my fuel truck to the helicopter, fueled it, set the brake in my truck, and returned to the office. Shortly thereafter three or four of us in the airport office collectively looked east and noticed the fuel truck had rolled down a slight embankment and struck the helicopter. My heart sank.

We all ran over and I told whoever went inside the truck to check the brake. The emergency brake was set but did not hold. One of the helicopter blades was badly damaged. Later I remember the pilot looking at the damage. I know he blamed me. The only mistake I made was not taking the truck back to where it belonged - maybe a couple of hundred feet away. That is my defense and my excuse. I was not fired.

But I quickly accepted a higher paying job at the Boulder Post Office when it was offered a week or two later. I think I made $2.64 per hour. That was a lot of money then. Do the math. If you ever worked an hourly job, cents matter. I have never forgotten the value of cents.

My job was simple. I picked up canvas bags of envelopes, dumped the contents onto a stainless steel messing table where others workers liked me flipped the mail right-side up and moved it toward the cancelling machine all the time placing the stamp in the lower left hand corner. Later when I was skilled, I got to operate the cancelling machine. I would moved pieces of mail one-at-a-time into the cancelling apparatus which would grab the mail, affix the day and time, and send it on its way. Some other people sorted the mail into outgoing containers. Others sorted local mail for delivery. My job required no skill. I guess I failed at that too because one day, just around noon, I got one of my fingers caught in the cancelling machined. I screamed out in pain. The machine grabbed my finger and would not let it go free.

My supervisor was a short red haired man in his fifties, He ran over, shut off the machine, and got my finger dislodged. It wasn't cut off. I wasn't even bleeding badly - if at all. I don't remember. I was in shock. But I vividly remember my supervisor telling someone to sign me off the clock as we headed out the back door to go to the hospital.

My finger was okay. Nothing was broken. I returned to work the next day and stayed at the Post Office until the week before I entered college. I think that was the last hourly job I ever had. I really liked the men I worked with. They were happy with their lives. There was no muss or fuss or any commotion. Simple routine jobs. 

One final comment about Hurricane Dorian. CNN and the national media has once again scarred the hell out of 20 million people in Florida and their loved ones and others across the world. They all need to chill and wait to go postal about a storm when there is actually a storm coming our way. Twenty million people cannot get in a car and evacuate. Scarring people is not the solution to dealing with bad weather.