REVIEW: Mailman: My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home by Stephen Starring Grant
An exuberant, hilarious, and profound memoir by a mailman in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, who found that working for the post office saved his life, taught him who he was, gave him purpose, and educated him deeply about a country he loves but had lost touch with.
Steve Grant was laid off in March of 2020. He was fifty and had cancer, so he needed health insurance, fast. Which is how he found himself a rural letter carrier in Appalachia, back in his old hometown.
Suddenly, he was the guy with the goods, delivering dog food and respirators and lube and heirloom tomato seeds and Lord of the Rings replica swords. He transported chicken feed to grandmothers living alone in the mountains and forded a creek with a refrigerator on his back. But while he carried the mail, he also carried a whole lot more than just the mail, including a family legacy of rage and the anxiety of having lost his identity along with his corporate job.
And yet, slowly, surrounded by a ragtag but devoted band of letter carriers, working this different kind of job, Grant found himself becoming a different kind of person. He became a lifeline for lonely people, providing fleeting moments of human contact and the assurance that our government still cares. He embraced the thrill of tackling new challenges, the pride of contributing to something greater than himself, the joy of camaraderie, and the purpose found in working hard for his family and doing a small, good thing for his community. He even kindled a newfound faith.
A brash and loving portrait of an all-American institution, Mailman offers a deeply felt portrait of both rural America and the dedicated (and eccentric) letter carriers who keep our lives running smoothly day to day. One hell of a raconteur, Steve Grant has written an irreverent, heartfelt, and often hilarious tribute to the simple heroism of daily service, the dignity and struggle of blue-collar work, the challenge and pleasure of coming home again after twenty-five years away, and the delight of going the extra mile for your neighbors, every day.
CW/TW – discussions of politics in 2020, discussion of the mass shooting event at Virginia Tech in 2007 (Grant’s father was wounded in the attack), discussion of gun culture in western VA, discussions of COVID and 2020, discussion about mail carriers and dogs.
I fell back in love with America during that year.
Review
I like reading NF books about jobs I know little about and, in this case, a job that I thought I knew about. I mean mail delivery, how hard is it? Take letters, magazines, junk mail, and parcels out and bring stuff back. Easy peasy. Oh, how little I knew about the reality of the job.
I was the goddamned mailman.
When Covid hits, Grant is suddenly out of a white collar job and in desperate need of health insurance due to a cancer diagnosis and a family dependent on him. Eventually he applies for a part-time (hahaha) job as a rural mail carrier. See there is rural mail carrying and city carrying. Rural mail carriers are supposed to supply their own vehicles (yes, really) and often service routes that take long hours and many miles to finish. Each variation, though, has its own particular health issues for those carriers. Interesting fact – there is an Arizona mail route that goes to the bottom of the Grand Canyon via burro.
After a two week intro to the job, those who pass have to swear an Oath of Office and become a sworn agent of the US government.
Then it’s time to really learn the job by doing it and it is hard. Seasoned veterans of the USPS make it look easy. They can “case” their mail and parcels quickly and be out on the road. But to sort the mail by delivery address means memorizing the delivery route which can be 60 miles long. The USPS delivery trucks are both sturdy and a nightmare. Remember rural carriers are supposed to supply their own and everyone has to have a backup. What to wear to avoid heat stroke or hypothermia? Better learn fast as each year mail carriers die from these. Dogs on the route? Veterans tell the newbies that one day a dog (or two) will have your number and you’d better have two to three cans of HALT!. Yes, mail carriers have been attacked by dogs and some have been mauled to death.
Grant experiences the highs and lows of the job. Newbies often don’t last long and some veterans won’t engage with them for up to two months until they prove they’ve got what it takes to stick with it. “Yes, there is a lot of crying at the post office.” Grant’s first months included the hell on earth of lockdown when everyone started buying online. Then Amazon and the UPS came to loggerheads over a contract so Amazon dumped all their small parcel deliveries on the USPS which can’t say no. The trucks of parcels kept coming and coming and coming which made the piles of boxes climb sky high.
That is the other difference between a regular and a sub. The sub just delivers the mail. The regular is delivering something else. Continuity. Safety. Normalcy. Companionship. Civilization. You know, the stuff that a government is supposed to do for its people.
During his year, Grant sees those who treat the carriers with respect – leaving cold bottles of water or a thermos of hot coffee on the porch – and those who treat them with disdain. He hauls chicken feed – but no live chicks as a particular employee does that using a truck with A/C. He realizes that “Book of the Month” is still a thing and that mail carriers know everything about their regular customers. Everything. He discovers that along with books, delivering mail-in ballots is the most important thing he does all year. And from what he says, the USPS workers take this very seriously. They also have spatial memory of their routes that Grant equates with the Knowledge of London cabbies.
More than delivering the mail is learned. Grant does a lot of mid-life self discovery. He’s back in the town he was brought up in but seeing it with different eyes. His white collar, soft hands self has to toughen up. He has to be talked out of quitting day by day by coworkers and his wife. At one point, he’s on his knees in a customer’s front yard praying for the strength to keep going. In doing so he rediscovers the people of the area.
“United States Postal Service, ma’am.”
“Oh my goodness. Nobody comes up here. Nobody. Hell, you’re the first person I’ve seen that isn’t kin since all of this started. Of course, it’s the post office. You all are the only ones with any guts. The rest of them won’t even try it in their fancy trucks.”
Now I’ll be honest. There is a lot about politics in this book. 2020 was full of it. Grant spends a chapter on getting back in touch with religion and tells of times when he got “the whim whams” on deliveries way back down in the rural sticks late at night and how his USPS reflective vest might have saved his life. He describes the smell that mail has and outlines his ‘survival gear.’ He desperately searches for a new corporate job and in the end, gets one. After reading this book, I’ve crossed “mail carrier” off my theoretical list of “that might be interesting to try” jobs but from now on I have a great deal more respect for them. B
~Jayne
We carry it. And then we head home to our families and brace ourselves. We pray for strength and then get up and do it all again. To the last mile. Every letter, every parcel, every day.
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This sounds intriguing, Jayne! Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
@Kareni: After I finished it, I thought that the US Marine motto “The Few, The Proud, the Marines” could be modified to ” … the Mail Carriers” and be accurate.
Jayne, your comment about the Marine motto applying to the mail carriers reminded me of a favorite book. It’s a about delivering mail, its Terry Pratchett’s “Going Postal”. Satire, but really sweet at heart. Like a Tardis, and most of his books, it’s shallow on the surface, but extremely deep inside.
@Nudibranch: Please don’t throw anything at me but I have to confess that I’ve never read any of Pratchett’s books. He’s got so many that I don’t know where to start. Is “Going Postal” a stand-alone? Could I start with that one?
@Jayne: Yes, it’s a great starting point. I think he was at his peak here, in this book. It’s one of my favorites of his.
@Nudibranch: Okay, thanks. And my library has it!
Your review of this book reminds me of Michael Gill’s How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else (2007).
This sounds so good. I’ll request from my library!
Preordered this book and could hardly wait for it to be delivered by Amazon…. say what? I have been a City Letter Carrier in Las Vegas, Nevada for over 32 years. Working out of same station, same zip code entire career. It’s always been “To the last mile. Every letter, every parcel, every day.” And for sure, “Every day a miracle”. This book was a pleasure and sheer delight to read. As I contemplate retirement, it also reminded me and renewed my faith in what I’ve been doing the past 30+ years in the desert. Of course, some days were better than others…. Best part of delivering mail is being outside and my customers!
@B L P: Some days are always better than others. Thanks for the work you do. I had to laugh when Grant talks about how the regular carrier knows everything about their customers. Neighbors and I used to joke that if we wanted the scoop and gossip about the neighborhood, just ask Dave (our then mailman).
I got lucky just like Steve did, getting health insurance shortly after getting hired as a sub of record (similar to RCA).I spent 32 years, rising up to my dream job as Postmaster of the 3 route office that I started in the Appalachian mountains of Virginia. Would love to hear Steve read.
Rain, snow, sleet my friend!
americasroutes.com
@Rachel Wetherill: Just read your piece there. Gosh, what gorgeous scenery you got to see each day.
https://americasroutes.com/stories-from-the-roads/
I looked forward to this book. My Father was a Letter Carrier for 32 years 1958-1991. So I had a working knowledge for the USPS.
My father worked hard as a city street carrier. For the last 20 years of this career he work 1-2 hours of overtime helping out on short routes.
There were parts of this book I found touching and others infuriating. The Authors distain for Christians and Catholics in particular was disappointing. At one point talks about being a “very lapsed” Catholic. If he had a little more faith in God and himself, some of his “issues” he encountered may have been easier to work thru.
Being an “elite liberal” he should have had more of charitable stance toward others, but his ” look down the nose attitude of conservatives and Trump supporters, leaves this reader disappointed. All the political references could be left out for a much better read. The authors has a one sided, slanted view of lower class people that don’t subscribe to his politics, is just reinforcing the “liberal, moneyed, elite stereotype.