Remember your mailbox, too

Readers of yesterday's The Woodstock Independent were treated to a kind and gentle, informational article that alerts its readers that the USPS requests (requires?) residents to shovel a path to their mailboxes, if they expect mail delivery.

Mailmen (oops, "mailpersons") may allow neither rain, nor sleet, nor rain, nor hail to deter them from their rounds but, if they get to your property and can't get to your mailbox or up the sheet of ice to your front door, then they may just carry your mail right back to 1050 Country Club Road in Woodstock.

So get out there with your shovel the next time, and dig out your mailbox, too. And throw some salt on the skating rink in front of it. I have lived in areas where postal employees actually obeyed their work rules and refused to deliver mail to houses when the walks weren't shoveled. We're lucky in Woodstock. Maybe postal life in a small town is different than in the big, old, impersonal city.

Remember, too, that many routes are now "motor routes." If the carrier can't drive up to your mailbox, you may just end up picking up your mail at the Post Office. During business hours only, of course.

And what else? The Postal Services asks you to shovel out around the collection boxes in your neighborhoods. Now that's pushing it a little. Next will we be expected to get out there and clean the ice off the delivery trucks, if it snows while they are parked in our neighborhoods?