Curator’s Corner

Published:  Monday, December 7, 2009 (3 months ago)
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 by Gary Levitt

Over my 30 years with the US Postal Service, I had many opportunities to experience different aspects of the business as well as having assignments all over the country. In addition, I had the good fortune of working with some really interesting people. As a result, I have numerous stories to tell you that you might find of interest. My first job is supervision was the delivery unit in Lima for the 45804 zone. This area encompassed several industrial areas and residential areas in the south end. In this neighborhood, it seemed that there were numerous dog owners and some of those dogs were quite large and were not happy campers when someone wearing a uniform would come across “their territory.”
Dog bites are a serious problem. It was not uncommon to have a carrier bitten every week.  One thing that some of the carriers did was to carry dog bones and give them out to keep the dogs happy. That worked fine except when they weren’t there and a different carrier was on the route. The dogs now were expecting a treat and it was not forthcoming.  Actually that is why carriers were instructed not to feed dogs on their route.
We tried to protect our carriers so they were given “dog spray” – a form of mace that wouldn’t permanently hurt a dog but the spray would sting their eyes for a while and that would give the carrier an opportunity to get away. The spray at that time was a dirty yellowish color that would stain the dog fur and the dog would have to be washed.  It also spelled unpleasant as well.
One day I received a call from a customer that was just livid. He started out telling me that the carrier had sprayed his dog.  I tried politely to explain the situation of dog bites and why carriers would spray them. He kept interrupting me screaming, “but he sprayed my dog.” Finally her blurted out – “my dog is a concrete statue.” At that point I had to contain my laughter and proceeded to get his address, etc.  It seems the substitute carriers came around a building and caught out of the corner of his eye what looked like a very large dog and sprayed it.  I told the gentleman that someone would be out that day to clean up his “dog.” That has been decades ago, but I think that carrier is still kidded about that to this day.  If you see me around, ask me to tell you how this same individual delivered Readers’ Digest Condensed Books out of his convertible….
My next assignment was as the Manager of the Cridersville Post Office.  In the early 1980s, the Bayliff Funeral Home was one of only a couple of crematoriums in about a 90 mile radius. There wasn’t a day that went by that John Bayliff wasn’t bringing in several boxes of remains. One day John came in to see me to tell me that a gentleman that he mailed a few days earlier still had not arrived in Fostoria and his funeral was scheduled for today.  I started to investigate when my phone rang and it was a supervisor in a mail processing facility in California. He had the box and it appeared that someone had read the first digit on the zip code to be a 9 instead of a 4. At this point it would be a couple days before the package would get to its destination. John had to notify the family. An hour or so later, John was back in my office with a rather sad look on his face.  I was sure the family was furious. When he had explained to the family what had happened John said there was nothing but dead silence on the other end of the phone (no pun intended).  Finally, the gentleman’s son spoke and said, “Dad always want to go to California. I am glad he finally made it.”  Is this the point where we say, “and everyone lived happily ever after.”
For many years the post office would ship live animals, baby chicks, crickets, and numerous other small animals.  At one point in my career, I was working at the truck terminal at the Cincinnati Post Office.  In this building every sack of mail either coming into or leaving Cincinnati was sorted to trucks at any of the 40 or so truck bays on the exposed dock.  I was standing on the dock and all of a sudden the employees started running out any open door and jumping off the dock. I turned around and looked into the terminal and all I could see were swarms of bees.  Fortunately we had an employee who was a bee keeper and after a while he was able to get the queen and solve the problem. There are a lot more interesting stories but we will have to end for now.

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