U.S. Mail By Abraham Lincoln

The first thing I can remember about the post office is they sold “penny” post cards. I think a first class postage stamp cost three cents.

Our mail was delivered in canvas sacks. There were two sacks of mail. One sack was not full but the other was. Letters and post cards came in the first class mail sack. The rest of the mail was in the second bag. It contained magazines, catalogs and advertisements of all kinds. The mailman dragged both sacks of mail into the store, past the spittoons and into the post office. The mail sack was dumped out and the postmaster sorted through the contents and put each letter in the appropriate mailbox–the name and address matched.

The post office had two walls of numbered mailboxes–some had combination locks. A regular post office box, with a glass front, was cheapest but you had to ask for your mail. You could not get your mail because the opening was inside the post office. Nothing opened on the outside.

People came to the grocery store in the morning and in the afternoon about ten minutes before the mail truck came. It was a good time to talk to friends and neighbors who were waiting on the mail too. People gossiped and told the news that others had not heard. It was before television, of course, and many people did not own a radio. You got the news when you met other people who had heard the news.

The grocery store provided old chairs for people to sit on while they waited for the mail to be delivered, sorted and ‘put-up’ in the mailboxes. Old men would sit on the chairs that were lined-up leading back to the corner where the post office was; and, most chewed tobacco. People passed those chewing and spitting tobacco juice into the spittoons to get their mail. People never talked about chewing tobacco. Cigarettes were new and a few people smoked cigarettes and waited on the mail to be ‘put up’ in their boxes.

A big canvas bag and a brass padlock and the word, “U.S. Mail” stenciled on the sides was dragged in and out of the post office. The mailman, dragging two sacks of mail, told the old men chewing tobacco what the roads were like between Gordon and Verona. The old men nodded and smiled, like they already knew what the roads were like.

Sometimes he would be dragging a brand-new, snow-white bag. But those new bags got dirty fast because the mailmen didn’t carry anything—they dragged everything. He dragged the bags through ice and snow, and through water standing at the curbs, up the steps, into the store and across creosote stained floors into the post office where the bag had to be picked up and was finally unlocked and the contents dumped onto a sorting table.
Sorting the mail quickly, postmasters and store owners, Frank Pinkerton, and later Everett Gentner and Carl Morris, would throw the pieces going to Ithaca, Arcanum and Greenville back into the bag with any letters people in Gordon were sending out. It was dragged back outside and thrown into the back of the truck.

People looked forward to seeing the mail “put up” in the glass-front boxes. If you paid a little money you got a box with a combination lock and you could open it yourself. If you didn’t, you got a box with a glass front so you could see if you had any mail, but you had to ask the store clerk to get your mail.

My dad’s mailbox was the kind you had to ask the clerk to get your mail. Mother had a mailbox with a combination lock and I finally got tall enough to work the combination lock and open it.
The people all came back in the afternoon to get their mail coming from Greenville, Arcanum and Ithaca.

In all my time living in Gordon there was only once when the mail driver did not get through to us—those were the days before the roads were plowed or salted.

The people got their garden shovels and scoop shovels and walked down the road by the old D&U railroad tracks and began the task of shoveling the drifted snow off the road so the bread truck, the milk truck and the mailman could get through to us and on to Ithaca, Arcanum and Greenville.