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player ready...Christmastime was my father’s time.
This is the time I think a lot about Daddy, who was born on Christmas Day.
Andrew Washington Sr. is no longer with us, but he loved that holiday. So ’tis the season to honor his life’s service.
Daddy was a U.S. Postal Service mail carrier for 36 years.
He lived the motto, “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” Especially at Christmas.
Tall and lanky, slinging the duffel bag over his shoulder, plowing a rickety cart across icy sidewalks of Chicago’s South Side.
Every morning, five days a week, Daddy was up early, heading to his postal station before dawn to sort, stack, slot and haul the mail on his route.
In the late 1960s, we lived in Woodlawn, just a couple of blocks from the post office branch at 61st Street and Langley Avenue. As a child, I loved to watch my father traverse his route from our apartment window. His old blue postal uniform is lovingly tucked away in my closet.
When I was growing up in Chicago’s working-class, African American neighborhoods, “the mail carrier” was appreciated, and having one as a father impressed the neighborhood kids.
The mail carrier was a person of honor and reliance, a lifeline to normalcy and stability in the city’s challenged communities.
In prehistoric times, before direct deposit, Daddy made sure grateful residents got their public assistance payments, Social Security checks and utility bills.
Daddy took his mail very seriously. He knew the names of every family on his route. He would hit the doorsteps and apartment vestibules with a smile, a joke, a knock, or a ring of the bell to alert his customers that their mail was in.
His workload exploded around the holidays. As Christmastime rolled up, it was 12 hours a day, seven days a week.
Lugging mail around the ice, snow and occasional snapping dog was a tough, backbreaking job. On Christmas Eve, when it was all done, he wouldn’t come home until late at night.
Daddy loved it.
I wonder how he would fare in these 21st century times, so perilous for postal workers in so many ways, when the post office gets no respect.
Today, the important business gets done by email and online. We get our goodies, bucks and bills via cyberspace. What’s in the mailbox? Way too much junk.
The U.S. Postal Service is derided, underfunded and politicized. The agency faces stiff competition from corporate services like the United Parcel Service Inc. and FedEx Corp.
Mail carriers haul an unrelenting, overwhelming volume of packages, courtesy of Amazon and the millions of other retail outlets in the digital universe. In 2021, postal workers handled 7.6 billion packages, compared with 3.5 billion parcels in 2012, according to the U.S. Postal Service.
Today, I would be terrified for Daddy. The streets where he toiled for decades are infested with crime, daily shootings, armed robberies and carjackings.
Earlier this year, mail carriers were being targeted by robbers, who demanded that they hand over their “master keys,” ABC-7 reported Oct. 10. Postal employees use the keys to open cluster mailboxes and blue drop-off boxes.
The station interviewed a mail carrier who asked to remain anonymous to protect her safety. She was robbed while she was delivering mail in Humboldt Park on a Saturday afternoon.
“Two guys jumped out of the vehicle and said, ‘Give me those keys,’ ” she told ABC-7. They pointed a gun at her. She handed them over. She wasn’t hurt, but certainly traumatized.
“It’s like our lives are being threatened to go and be safe to deliver the mail,” she said.
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Aundre Cross was not so fortunate. On Dec. 9, the Postal Service carrier was shot to death while delivering mail on Milwaukee’s Northwest Side.
Cross, 44, was an 18-year post office employee and had four children, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. The Postal Service “is offering a reward of up to $50,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those involved in the homicide,” according to the newspaper.
The legions of service workers who deliver the mail and newspapers, serve our meals, drive our buses and taxis and Ubers, and all the rest, deserve our admiration and support.
During this Christmastime, my father’s time, be sure to tip them, thank them and pray they stay safe.
Laura Washington is a political commentator and longtime Chicago journalist. Her columns appear in the Tribune each Monday. Write to her at [email protected].
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