Who’s got mail?

A lot of people are ready to pull a shroud over the U.S. Postal Service.

Not so fast.

People of a certain age – make that any age – can remember what the mail carrier carried. Today it was love: a valentine. Sure, a lot of people sent and got “virtual” valentines and there was love in them but not much effort. Click on this, click on that, type a word or two and hit Send and move on to the next text message or Tweet.

The post office doesn’t Tweet but it has brought us generations of entertainment, affection and comfort not to mention catalogs full of enough dreams to carry a Northern kid like me through the darkness of a hard, cold winter. Across the globe or the backyard fence the post office was our contact with – and connection to – each other.

Why did Kevin Costner make a postman the hero and savior of the country in a major motion picture? Because the story resonated with us. It was believable.

Mail carriers brought us together as a people, starting with the pony express and on via flimsy aircraft barnstorming across the countryside at the beginning of powered flight. The mail put us into the stream of commerce, delivered the touches of family and friends and comforted lonely soldiers putting their lives on the line for us on battlefields far from all they knew.

Who but a soldier on a battlefield knows what a letter from home means?

So how do we bring that back? 

It never left. A lot of people got real valentines today. They came in the mail and they will sit on someone’s desk or mantle or dresser and they will still be there carrying a message of affection long after email disappears, buried deep in the Mail folder.

The post office isn't dead, it has just lost its way. And to find us again, it needs to dip into our memories and recall where it came from.