Everybody Has Their Own Story

The above picture has most of the carriers that worked out of the Sprayberry Postal Branch, Marietta, Georgia, in 1988. I worked there too.

I noticed this picture on facebook and could not figure out how to copy it in my system as save in the file I wanted. I think the reason I could not transport it where I wanted in my data was that many of carriers were labeled with their names. I emailed the person who contributed the picture Skip Are and asked him for a unaltered version which he very complied.

Is Are a nice person? You bet! Are Is a very nice person willing to share. Are Is collecting pictures of the 4-Lane, aka Cobb Parkway (if Skip is reading this I bet ARE and IS are getting very old to him used together. Skip should say Enough is Enough!

I zoomed in on each individual and knew something about interesting or funny about just about everyone in the picture.

For instance, I am not sure when cell-phones became a gadget that every one carried. I think this incident happened before they were totally popular.

There were a couple of hours in the morning that the Post Office where urgency of moving the mail to the carriers so that they could quickly sort it and get on the streets delivering it meant everything.

It meant bonuses for management to get the mail out timely. I have even seen new employees fired for not taking the urgency of the movement of the mail seriously.
Everybody always seemed to be in a frenzy during those couple of hours every morning with a frantic look in their eyes, especially supervisors.

One morning I was walking down the carrier aisle collecting miss-worked mail when I heard an electronic sound. A seasoned carrier pulled a little phone out of his pocket and said hello. His response was,

“Nothing much, what are you doing?”

At the moment people were rushing around like lives depended on it and he said, “Nothing much, what are you doing?”

I cracked up. I went back to the clerk area and told a couple of clerks. The statement/question was a hit.

“Nothing much, what are you doing?” was repeated hundreds of time over the next few weeks, until it got old.

One carrier there, retired now, owned some land between Dawsonville and Dahlonega. He told me he found some small gold nuggets in a creek on his property. He told me I should bring my boys and meet him and his girlfriend and we would all go to his property and make a day of mining for gold. He made a contraption that with a Briggs and Straton Motor, scoop out shovels of the creek bed and it would shift the sand and separate any nuggets found. I thought it was pretty ingenious.



We agreed to meet at a little store off Hwy 400. When I drove up with Anna and my two boys the carrier and his girlfriend were waiting. He suggested he and I go into the store and buy some hotdogs, drinks, buns, and the makings and have a cookout by the creek. We found all but the catsup and mustard. We asked the lady behind the counter where were the condiments. She said aisle 4 (this is on another posting, maybe two other postings, so stop me if you read it before). We went to aisle 4 and did not see the condiments.

We went back and told her we didn’t see them. Now, she was getting huffy. She said she would show us, if we were on aisle 4 we couldn’t miss them.

She marched around the counter and we meekly followed her. Once inside aisle 4 she shot her finger at condoms on a rack and said, “Here are the condiments!”

We said, “No, no, we are looking for catsup and mustard!” Her face turned red and said, “Oh.” Then she told us the right aisle.

My boys did find a few pebbles of gold.

A female carrier in the group was a distant cousin-in-law, for several years she put Christmas decorations all over her mail vehicle, which management ordered her to remove, which I don’t think she did. She also dressed wildly on Halloween and again management ordered her to change, which I don’t think she did. Then one year she came to work on Halloween dressed as a prostitute with net stockings, low-cut, and heavy makeup. She was sent home and I think suspended. I think that was the last time I saw her.



There are more memories – which I may get to some day.