A Postal Memoir That’s About So Much More Than Mail https://ift.tt/ctIvDsC
A few years ago, my primary mailing address was a P.O. Box. I loved the physical rituals of that box: the substantial key, the antique brass door with its satisfying thunk that told me it was secure as I turned to go. Packages didn’t fit, however, so every few days, I would present my claim slip to the postal worker behind the counter. If it was Stephanie, I’d be greeted before I could hardly clear the doorway. Stephanie knew everything and everybody. She worked efficiently and built community with every customer – whether it was the young woman in slippers counting out cash for a money order or the older gentleman in a suit and fedora asking for a single stamp to mail his letter. I haven’t had the P.O. Box since I moved across town, but sometimes when I’m in the neighborhood, I stop in just to say hi. It’s a place that feels like home.
Stephen Starring Grant explores the idea of finding home through the postal service in his memoir Mailman: My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home. Grant, a Blacksburg, VA, native, had built a solid career as a high-end consultant in marketing and consumer strategy, but in March of 2020, his world is upended when he’s fired, his job another casualty of the Covid-19 crisis. With bills to pay, a family to support, a cancer diagnosis, and a global pandemic in play, Grant’s needs are high, and his options are low. In fact, the only job he can secure is as an RCA (Rural Carrier Associate) with the United States Postal Service. What’s supposed to be a part-time, temporary gig ends up keeping Grant in steady work for over a year, work he credits with a rediscovery of the idea of home:
“I didn’t set out to deliver the mail to figure out who I was or where I belong. I joined up to get health care for my family, and maybe have an adventure in the bargain. But working for something bigger than myself reconnected me with my family, with my town. With the mountains, and yes, America.”
Mailman provides a well-balanced blend of styles, mixing United States history and postal service background with contemporary social commentary and a healthy dose of anecdote. Whether describing his coworkers or fellow trainees, the neighbors on his route, or his own mom and dad, Grant keeps the wheels of his memoir moving with the stories of the people he encounters. Often, his stories about other people will tell you just as much about himself.
In one particular tale about a parcel delivery stop, he meets “a big guy in a Carhartt work jacket and MultiCam utility pants” whose set of four packages – identical, flat, and very heavy – had mystified the folks back at the PO. Grant thinks he might know what they are and asks the guy, “Are they rifle plates for body armor?” Turns out, they are steel rifle targets, partner to the “new Smithfield M1A in 6.5-millimeter Creedmoor” that the guy – former military living back home with his folks – happily brought out to let Grant handle. As the brief story unfolds, Grant reveals that he, too, knows a lot about guns, a commonality that allows him to connect with a stranger in his driveway. Grant admits: “I had never been to Afghanistan, never served, never even hunted white-tail,” but their shared appreciation of the mechanics and artistry of the rifle gave them common ground.
Driving the route gives Grant plenty of time to consider what’s important, and this ideal of common ground across differences is clearly a concept that matters to him. The complexity of the issue becomes prominent in October, as he and his coworkers handle the mail-in ballots of the 2020 election. At one point, Grant asserts, “We don’t have to agree with each other. We just have to agree to work and live together.” A page later, though, he acknowledges, “Here we are, all of us stuck in the same country, inescapably intimate with the fellow citizens of our shared republic. Here we are, all of us sorted into groups where we hold each other at arm’s length, naked with uninformed disgust.”
Though he isn’t able to neatly untangle this knot, Grant sings the praises of the USPS as a unique signifier of our bonds across any and all divides, insisting that it can remind us “that we are a people, that our job is to love and protect each other, that our government at its best is us, and that when we are alone, we are still together, joined by ideas, history, correspondence, chicken feed, and refrigerators. Out of many, one.”
As promised in the subtitle, Mailman takes readers on a wild ride, and sometimes, Grant’s route is more circuitous than it should be. But readers who are able to overlook the meandering narrative with its onslaught of acronyms and occasionally jumbled details will thrill to tag along as Grant pulls back the curtain on the U.S. Postal Service, revealing its foibles and idiosyncrasies alongside its stalwart heart, built of devoted service and hard work.
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