We had a flash new local post office where Mrs Hartley sorted the mail for her run with other posties.
We’d hear her coming, blowing her whistle. She was a quiet, busy woman. Not unfriendly but no time to chat.
Mrs Hartley was the only postie I knew then. Her mail run wasn’t long but was very busy.
We used to just take for granted postal deliveries, twice daily back in the 1950s and 1960s. Morning and afternoon post.
We also had telegram delivery people, similarly attired. In my memory, they came in little British vans but, before that, they were also on a bicycle or Shanks’s Pony. Telegrams were often unwelcome news in those times so when the boy arrived with one, most waited with bated breath. News that had to be delivered much quicker than by snail mail was too urgent.
This sounds quaint now in the time of social media, emails and cellphones but, even in the 1950s, telephones were not as widely used as many may assume.
We never got a telephone until about 1958, my parents relying on the red telephone box on the corner or, on the odd occasion, a neighbour who had a phone. I still remember our first telephone number: 68-229.
People just did not use phones that much. Toll calls were expensive and rare, usually for urgent news that needed to be passed.
Roll forward 60-odd years. We still have a landline and a telephone but it is rarely used nowadays. Usually, just some friendly voice from Telecom Security or Visa Company Security ringing to tell us we are having problems with our internet or Visa card, but if we give them the numbers they will help us. Such kind young people. I always politely tell them to write me a letter. So thoughtful.
But we now live on our flash Samsung phones, purchased when I retired. We had cellphones for years but just basic ones and hardly used. Nothing flash like now.
Anyway, I digress.
For quite a few years the love shack on the hill has been used as a mail drop for NZ Post. Our old postie Bruce had a small motorcycle; before that, it was Warren on a push-bike, well into the 2010s.
We live on top of a hill, secluded from the street, so a safe place for the neighbourhood mail to be dropped by the depot for the postie.
We used to get a daily delivery, barring Sunday. Then it went to Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
We hardly receive any mail at all now and the depot hasn’t delivered mailbags for months. We are still the drop point as we got a Christmas present from NZ Post. A wee something.
Our postie isn’t Bruce any more, he’s retired. We do not see our postie now. Still on the motorbike I guess, putt-putting around with the other home delivery people, a pleasant sound in our quiet neighbourhood, reminding us to check our mailboxes.
We all used to write letters. I haven’t written a personal letter in many years. I found some a while ago, sent by workmates and other friends or family over the years. They were a pleasure to re-read.
Personal letter-writing was a skill, even an art.
I blame the internet. We do not need to write letters or send correspondence anymore. Our bills all arrive by email and are paid by internet banking or some such arrangement. We do not post coupons away for stuff we want to buy, just order it online.
Life is a lot less busy in some ways as a result. There is now just less snail mail. We still get the odd letter, usually a business letter which, if we thought about it, we could arrange to have emailed to us.
I still correspond with others but it’s by email or Messenger now.
So our posties are having less to deliver but probably bigger areas to cover now. I guess there will be a time when home-delivery mail will be a thing of the past. That’s a shame as it provided work for many people like Mrs Hartley, Warren and Bruce.
