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.

First post: Is this my stop?

I was on the bus many years ago on my daily commute from New York City. We rolled out of the Lincoln Tunnel and onto the local streets in Jersey and all of a sudden the guy sitting beside me who had not spoken since we boarded says “Is this my stop?”.

These were the days of popular recreational drug use, so the question needed careful thought. Did it come out of Reefer Madness or someplace on the right side of controlled substance laws -- maybe some textbook pathology that challenged higher brain function? Or was I the problem, one beer over the line myself? I had no answer so it came out something like: “I have no opinion on that”. Then he told me he was going to Englewood Hospital and it was just ahead so I rang the bell and the bus stopped and he got off and the bus rolled on. I recall feeling that the trip had gone well. He had chosen the right transport, been given good instructions and had arrived safely at his hospital-of-destination and where he wound up -- visitors lounge or rehab unit -- was outside the influence of either the bus driver or myself. We just got him there.

That's pretty much how it goes in life. There's no GPS unit that will help you choose the fork in the road you should take. You have to rely on your own wits and experience and ask the right people the right questions along the way.

The bus ride is a fine metaphor. “Get on the bus” the man said and he meant it to be a call to go somewhere and do something as opposed to nowhere and nothing. I’ve been on (and off) the bus for 68 years. I’ve been places I never in my wildest dreams thought existed when I was 10 and came through places in my 20s and 30s that I am not able to recall clearly.

Long ago we Senior Creative People chose the “go somewhere, do something” route and our resumes show it. We haven’t been everywhere and done everything but the Been/Done List is long and there is time left.

Now we’re off on a new adventure. If you’d like to join us, this is your ticket. Comment. Critique. Carp. You're invited. Get on the bus.