The pictures do not lie.
(my ‘hippie’ u years)
Age 21, I had finished a BA, English at U of A, in the spring of ’71, with 1 year of PD/AD (Professional Diploma/After Degree in Education) to go so I could teach.
I applied at the post office for summer work and, long-haired, was interviewed. The boss said if I wanted the job I’d have to get a haircut, which I did, needing the money for tuition in my fourth year.
I reported to work, got fingerprinted ( theft of mail concern), and was sent out to the Northgate depot, then on 97th Street south of what is now Northtown Mall.
My routes included in Londonderry (just being built then) and 118 th Avenue area east of 97th Street (then still a respectable area. On the latter route I took note of a nice b & w portrait of a young Leonard Cohen, who had passed through Edmonton in the late ’60s, later returning to buy it for a costly $25. (I later bestowed it to my English Dept. at McNally in 1983 when I left there.)
I spent a lot of time on buses (letter carriers used to ride for free on ETS). I would catch the first 6 am bus at 38th Ave. & 111 St. open-air ‘terminal’ (after a ride from 35A Ave. where I lived), transfer to a trolley at Lendrum which took me downtown where I’d catch another trolley to the circle at 118 Ave. and 101 St., where I’d catch a bus going north past the postal depot. In the mornings, this process took 1 hr. Coming home 1 1/2 hrs. or more.
And I took buses to and from the route, coming back to the station at noonhr. but able to leave the end of the route after work to go straight home. The carriers punched a time clock in the morning and at noon. There were unscrupulous carriers who clocked at noon, going home early, having actually finished their routes in the morning.
There were other ‘short cuts’ to be exploited by permanent carriers and drivers, some who wore shorts in the summer while most wear the de rigueur black wool pants and warm long-sleeve shirts. (I figured the pants were wool for warmth in winter.)
When we started work, we’d go to slotted cabinets for our walks, open bags of mail left there, then put the mail in the right slots. After that, the mail was rubber-banded in an order not terribly well-marked on the cabinet. There were mornings I remember my holding up a driver because I hadn’t finished the banding. Once or twice, when I couldn’t make sense of the order, the right-hand underling of the boss there had to come in and finish the work hastily for the driver. I still recall the other older regular carriers yapping away at each other in the din. Some were funny; one guy from the ‘old country’ used to sing often, mockingly, to his friend Har-ry in a pronounced German accent, “Have you ever been lonely? Have you ever been blue?”
We picked up our mail after getting toff the bus and walking to those tall dark green mailboxes that used to be at corners, and then transferring the mail to our bags. There were always unexpected glitches on the walks: sudden rain storms–no jacket, talkative homeowners, dogs barking (We had a product called “Off” to wear on our belts to ward off loose biting dogs. There were carriers who had been bitten, who needed time off.) Back then, too, many walkup apts. had slots inside the front door that anyone else might have stolen from.
And as you got close to the houses, there’d be interesting placements for the mailboxes and unexpected signs like the one that read “Do not touch the flowers. The neighbors are watching you and will report you to the police.”
There was also a distinct lack of trust sometimes of “casuals” as the summer help was called and I can remember delivering by Meadowlark and starting to take more time since I was paid by the clock. (This never amounted to much more, maybe up to an extra hour. I didn’t see a great need to rush like most of the permanent guys, some of whom cheating on the time clock claiming 3 more hrs. than reflected by reality.)
So the flunky, mentioned above, and my big boss from downtown actually came out by car to the end of my route to see what time I was finishing up. They were definitely surprised to see me doing a relatively honest day’s work, told me to speed it up and I never had a problem again. And so it went for 4 months of the most exercise and walking I have probably ever had in my life. I was a skinny guy as you can see from the above photo: 140lbs. something like that.
After u ended the following year, Karen and I were married at age 21 on May 3 (our 50th anniversary this spring). We went on our honeymoon the day after arriving in Jasper that afternoon, checking in at the hotel to find that her mother had telephoned with a message regarding the post office calling and offering me a job again. I was told to report in 2 days with a haircut (so much for the fashionable shoulder-length hair in the wedding photo below), so so much for the honeymoon–1 day in Jasper! (We did a make-up week in Banff in the following spring, but it poured for a week! We didn’t have any luck on honeymoons.)
I guess I must have passed muster overall though, given the report the big boss gave me below:
Overall, the money was good; paid for my final year tuition. I got a nice tan, lots of exercise, spent a lot of time on my own, rode buses a fair bit, and showed I could handle reasonable challenge on a daily job.