Ahead of their time

I gather that as Yuppiedom has pressed its way into the boondocks, RFD as it once was has gradually been supplanted by more sophisticated mail delivery. I mean, lawd, they drive real mail trucks now!

Now that the Postmaster General has warned that six-day mail delivery may no longer be cost-effective, it would seem that the mainstream Postal Service has finally caught up with the work ethic of the old-time rural carrier.

Once upon a time, if you lived in the country, the theory was that RFD delivered six days a week, and neither rain, nor snow, nor...you get it. Where I lived, being "on the mail" was a useful adjunct to farming, and the carriers weren't fools enough to let, say, a clear day for haying go to waste delivering mail.

Many of these worthy gentlemen were also of the mold of Yankee who would bend a road around a large rock rather than put in extra work removing the rock, and who never stood upright if there was a useful object to lean against. Six-day mail delivery, then, was something of a joke.

There actually was a joke, in which an irate customer confronted the RFD carrier about the lack of delivery yesterday. "Wal," says the country postman, "the bag wa'nt full."

So that's all our postmaster general really has to do now. Don't deliver the mail if the bag ain't full.