Blogs

By Dean Norman

Back in the day before email and cell phones, the mailman was a hero. There was someone at home in most houses, and that person would wait to hear something being put into the mailbox. There wasn’t any mail on many days because most mail was first class letters or birthday cards or postcards from relatives and friends.

If mail usually arrived about 10 a.m., the person in the house would listen to hear mail being put into the box. If nothing was heard by 10:20 or 10:30 … well, it was a no mail day. That made days when there was mail even more special.

During the summer a kid at home home might hear the mail being delivered and rush to get it. The kid might be expecting to receive a Jack Armstrong pedometer, or a Little Orphan Annie decoding badge, or a Lone Ranger glow-in-the-dark ring with secret compartments with pictures of the Lone Ranger and Tonto. You could replace these with your own pictures if you wanted to.

“Look, Mom! An airmail letter from Uncle Ben. Air Mail! Can I open it?”

“No! Don’t open it! You might tear the letter inside if you don’t open it carefully.

I wonder what is so important that Uncle Ben bought an airmail stamp? I guess if it was REALLY important, he would call long distance.”

If you bought an air mail stamp, you usually also bought an air mail envelope that had a border of red, white and blue marks. It had to be something important to justify the extra expense of air mail. Something extremely important like the birth of a new baby, or the death of a relative, would justify the expense of a long distance phone call.

Whenever the mail came later in the day, and bad weather was not a reason, you knew that a substitute mailman was probably walking the route. You would ask about the health of your regular mailman. Your mailman wasn’t family, but he was important to the routine of your everyday life. You really cared about his health and happiness.

The volume of mail close to Christmas increased a lot. There would be packages and lots of cards. Regular delivery at a particular time each day was no longer true. There would be a continuous march of temporary mailmen. Sometimes you would be picking mail out of your box that had just been delivered, and here would come another mailman with a handful of Christmas cards for you. The mailman was a super hero at Christmas. Second only to super-super hero Santa Claus who would make the super important delivery of presents on Christmas Eve.

And of course Jesus was important at Christmas, too. There was a little manger scene under the Christmas tree to remind you of what Christmas was really about. But you never actually saw Jesus or Santa Claus. You did see the mailman all year. He was a real hero who was there six of every seven days in a week to bring you news from family and friends. And occasionally a valuable prize that you had bought with 10 cents and a lot of box tops from Wheaties or Ovaltine.

— Dean Norman 

Dean Norman is a cartoonist and humor writer, whose work has appeared in greeting cards, The New Yorker, MAD Magazine, The Cleveland Plain Dealer Sunday Magazine and The Kansas City Star. He's also written comedy for cartoon shows and written and illustrated children's books. He illustrated a cartoon book for Cleveland Metroparks, Cleveland Metroparks Adventures.