Hitting the Streets: City letter carrier enjoys pounding the pavement

People periodically ask me what was my favorite story I covered. Sure, I could say it was my time in Bosnia, or the exorcism I covered in Egypt, but the truth is that it’s a story about a normal guy and getting inside the head of someone we see every day. The following story was originally published in the Potomac News, March 28, 1996.

Life no longer resembles the world of Norman Rockwell, if it ever did. But here and there, around the margins, things continue as they were.

Children still cry on their first trip to the barber. Families still gather ’round the Thanksgiving dinner table. And letter carriers like Royce Robinson are still integral parts of their communities.

His day, like those of other Manassas postal workers, begins early. Robinson punches in at 7 a.m., then goes to the parking lot to give his van a safety inspection.

Roughly 80 letter carriers work out of the main post office on Sudley Road, servicing 53 routes through the city.

“A lot of people, especially your everyday Joe, think we just grab the mail and go. That’s not the way it is,” Robinson, 41, said Tuesday, as he filed mail into labeled slots.

Increasingly, mail is mechanically sorted using bar code readers, but oddly sized mail, misfiled mail or envelopes with shiny windows atop their bar codes must be sorted by hand, a task that takes about three hours every morning.

Atop the rack of mail slots, a small statue, given to Robinson by his three children, sits, bearing the legend “World’s Greatest Postal Worker.”

“A regular carrier should not make a misdelivery,” Robinson said as he put aside mail intended for slots with plastic inserts in them. (Blue inserts mean “hold mail,” while red signifies a vacant address.) “To me, that’s a cardinal sin.”

Robinson has delivered mail on Postal Route 1016 about 300 days a year for seven of the 15 years he’s worked for the U.S. Postal Service.

“It’s a great job. I couldn’t have fallen into a better job,” he said of the job that often requires him to carry a sack full of 35 pounds of mail.

Born and raised in Manassas, he tried the police department briefly – “That little badge right there becomes a great target” – then worked construction before his brother, who does vehicle maintenance at the Manassas post office, suggested he apply there as well.

“When you’re out on the street, you’re your own boss. You know what you have to do and you get it done,” Robinson said.

The post office workroom floor is surrounded by a covered catwalk pierced at regular intervals by one-way mirrors. They serve as a blind in which postal inspectors can hide, making sure the sanctity of the U.S. mail is protected.

“It’s a high pressure job. You’re out there all alone, and sometimes it grates on you,” Robinson said.

“Everybody who touches registered mail has to sign for it. [If registered mail is lost,] you could lose your job.”

Even so, Robinson prefers the life of a letter carrier to the in-office supervisory work he sometimes does, he said as he stacked the sorted mail in plastic bins, setting each bundle down with an authoritative thunk.

At 10:30, he added machine-sorted mail to the hand-sorted pile and wheeled the whole collection to his truck, one of the Long Life Vehicles that replaced the old Postal Service Jeeps.

“These things aren’t built for convenience, I’ll say that much,” he said, surveying the LLV’s interior. “They’re noting but cast aluminum. Just old beer cans.”

The LLVs have a Chevrolet engine and chassis, but no radio and no air conditioning, and are built by Grumman, “the same people who made the lunar explorer.”

After parking, Robinson marched up and down the hills of the streets branching off Sudley Manor Drive and Copeland Drive, past Christmas decorations still up and Easter decorations newly arrived.

Robinson’s route consists of 14 “swings,” or delivery trips made from the parked van.

“Hello, Mrs. Carter. Beautiful day, isn’t it?” He greeted a woman who opened the door at his approach. “I think spring might finally be upon us.”

Contact with the people who live on his route is important to him.

“You get to know them real well, mostly. Some of them are real reclusive. Most of them you see on the weekends.”

Dealing with post office patrons is just good customer service, he said.

“Those people, the residential customers, are the ones buying the 32-cent stamps, and paying your salary.

“You’ve got a bunch of people you see every day. You should know where they are, what they should be doing. If something’s wrong, you should know that, too,” Robinson said.

His route consists of about 11 miles of driving a day and more than seven miles on foot.

“You have to get yourself in street shape. I know, when I’ve spent several weeks inside supervising, it takes me a while to get back in shape again.”

It was good walking weather Tuesday.

“We got a beautiful day out here, beautiful, The kind of day mailmen live for,” Robinson said.

The Blizzard of ’96 and the grim past few months were seemingly long gone. The sun was shining. The water was nice. Squirrels and flowers were in good supply and even a brilliant red cardinal or two could be spotted.

“How ya doin’ today, Colonel?” Robinson asked at another house. “Got a whole lot for you today.

“Holy God, you’re not kidding.” Resident Alex Mutch shook Robinson’s hand. “How’s the golf game?”

“Fine. I’m not playing as much as I’d like to.”

With other residents, Robinson discussed car repair and the weather.

Some residents, of course, are notorious for their much rockier relationship with their neighborhood letter carriers: the dogs who seem to be at every other house on Robinson’s route.

“I’ve had dogs come after me. You have to know what to do. One thing you don’t do is run. You may back away, but you don’t run. Because then, the chase is on,” he said.

To deal with just such emergencies, the U.S. Postal Service issues tear gas to letter carriers, although it is seen as a weapon of last resort.

The constant barking, yipping and woofing that accompanies Robinson’s deliveries on foot no longer gets to him.

“You get to the point where you just block them out, really. You just block them out,” he said.

A black lab in a town house on Campbell Court leapt against the storm door, barking furiously. Robinson, not batting an eye, put a toe against the door frame and continued putting mail into the box.

“We had one dog come right through a screen door one time,” he said as he walked away. “Right through.”

Not all dogs are problems, of course.

On Roxbury Avenue, two cocker spaniel puppies on the opposite side of a chicken wire fence vibrated with ecstasy upon seeing the mailman approach. Robinson reached over and scratched one puppy’s head. A boy of about four raced up to the fence to retrieve the mail, then shot off into the house, yelling “Mom! Mail!”

On Botsford Road, another of Robinson’s canine fans rolled onto her back as he approached.

“How ya doin’, Molly? How ya doin’, girl? Let me scratch your belly.”

Other times, it isn’t the dogs who are the problems.

“I tell you, on the very first house on this shift, there was this cat,” Robinson said. “If you walked past his bush to deliver the mail, and he knew you didn’t know he was there, he would jump out and attack your leg.”

Even such attacks don’t dim Robinson’s enthusiasm.

“Well, I could have gotten into postal management a long time ago, but right now I enjoy doing what I’m doing.”

The last portion of his route, taking him through the end of his shift at 3:30 p.m., is a “mounted” one, where he distributes mail from van to roadside mailboxes.

“How ya doin’?” Robinson asked a young child waiting beside his mailbox. “Good? Just ‘good?’ On a beautiful day like this?”

At some mailboxes, blocked by parked cars or trash cans, Robinson had to get out of his car to deliver the mail. The post office has a remedy for such offending residents: a snippy little note known as Notice 38.

“I never carry it,” Robinson said. “I figure if I’m too lazy to get out, I should do another job.”