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Morning Open Thread - A tale of the mail and rails, Part I [1]

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Date: 2023-12-21  

We have been seeking writers to host the Morning Open Thread. I received a kos-mail from Ozarkblue who graciously shared a story and gave me permission to relay it here. Thank you Ozarkblue for this wonderful memory.

Morning Open Thread is a daily, copyrighted post from a host of editors and guest writers. We support our community, invite and share ideas, encourage thoughtful and respectful dialogue in an open forum.

My Dad worked for the U.S. Post Office in a “railroad town” (pop. 6,000) in North Central Illinois. He sometimes walked routes, substituting for postal deliverymen who had a day off. But much of the time he spent working on ‘logistics’, since he was a ‘new hire’, and did not have an assigned route at that time.

Much of Dad’s work was sorting incoming mail for outgoing destinations. At that time, there were not the large ‘distribution centers’ that exist today. Therefore, each Post Office station sorted the mail and then sent it onward.

The mail was sorted into small bags made of canvas, and I don’t know exactly what granularity the sorting used. But, certainly there were ‘westbound’ bags and ‘eastbound’ bags. “Northbound’ and ‘southbound’ were sub-categories, because of the train routes (explained later).

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A lot of the mail was moved by passenger trains back then (circa 1950’s). In addition to carrying passengers, those trains had ‘mail cars’ where mail was further sorted, put into bags for distribution along the rail route or transferred to other trains for further destinations. The cars were designated as “Railroad Post Offices”, and many clerks worked in them, sorting mail that was picked up along the route.

My dad was often in charge of taking the mail to the railroad depot for the afternoon passenger train of the ‘Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific’ line. He also retrieved incoming mailbags from that train, destined for Dad’s Post Office and smaller outlying ones near his.

That train originated in Chicago on the northeastern side of Illinois and was headed for Rock Island on the western edge of the state. It passed through our town about 3 pm weekdays.

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This completes Part One of Ozarkblue’s story and explains the place. Part Two describes the daily process of moving the mail by railroad (as one man performed his duties).

I hope you’ll join us below for an open thread of shared time.

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