Member-only story
Cartero Borracho (Drunken Mailman)
Memoir of a Mailman #19
My life as a Reserve Carrier (RCA) got off to a rough start, there at the Otay Mesa Post Office, San Diego, CA, 92154.
Old timers like the Rammer (MM#18) harassed me daily, sometimes good-naturedly, sometimes not. To make matters worse, I constantly carried a different route. Sometimes I could bid on a route open due to the regular’s vacation, but that was a week or two of stability at most.
Letter Carriers are not complicated people, we don’t dream of complicated things. As I slogged along through Otay Mesa’s neighborhoods, dragging my satchel in the dirt, I daydreamed of having my own route, and leaving this instability behind. I was tired of getting the evil eye from customers who adored their regulars, and viewed all others like unwanted usurpers from another planet.
Basically I had two choices. I could get my own route in a rough ghetto station like Barrio Logan, and deal with the kind of problems I encountered in MM#15, or stick around Otay Mesa and pray for one of the old farts there to die, so I could move in and grab their gig.
Otay Mesa was a very geriatric station. It was the only Post Office in the South Bay area of San Diego that had not completely…
