From the Treetop

Marge's Mighty Sword

Today's Quote: "Beneath the rule of men entirely great, The pen is mightier than the sword." - George Bulwer-Lytton

I started to write a long rambling account of my relationship with my mother including bits and pieces of her life, but it got too long and too rambling, so instead I'll just tell you about Marge's Mighty Sword.

George Bulwer-Lytton wrote, "Beneath the rule of men entirely great, The pen is mightier than the sword." My mother took those words to heart. She was always writing letters.

Mostly she wrote to friends and relatives - chatty little letters brimming with tidbits of news and daily events. But every now and then she would ply her pen to more militant issues. She wrote to manufacturers to express dissatisfaction when one of their products did not meet her expectations. Occasionally she would write to tell them how pleased she was with their products as well. This often resulted in coupons, free samples and replacement products. She wrote to senators and congressional representatives to share her thoughts on various topics, and she sometimes wrote letters to the editors of newspapers, but she preferred to correspond
with individuals rather than the mass media.

Once she heard the owners of a no-kill animal shelter on a radio talk show. They were there to solicit support for their cause - money to keep the shelter going. She sent them a few dollars, but felt she had to do more. The thought occurred to her that while she didn't have a lot of money to send them, she did have an abundance of time ... and her trusty pen.

She recalled reading about several celebrities who were associated with various animal rights groups. Thinking that perhaps, they would be willing to support the local shelter's efforts, she wrote her letters. She sent letters to Doris Day, Cleveland Amery, Betty White and a few others. She did her part, but she didn't really expect much in the way of results. To her great surprise, Betty White responded.

She sent the shelter a very generous donation, and she answered my mother's letter. To my mother's even greater surprise, the shelter folks told the radio station, who in turn called my mother for an interview. Not to be out done, the local paper called as well. My mother was suddenly in the spotlight. Her fifteen minutes of fame had come at last!

Margie's mighty pen was most effective, however, when she wielded it in the name of a campaign. When fired with a just cause, she was relentless. In her finest hour, she took on the US Postal Service.

In 1990, having finally abandoned South Venice, Florida as a retirement location - too hot and crowded in the summer, too cold in the winter and too far from loved ones - my parents moved to Emmetsburg, MD.

My sister lives near Gettysburg, PA, so the move to Emmetsburg allowed my parents to be near their grandchildren once again. They found an apartment building just outside the main street area of town and settled in. After a few days, they noticed that they hadn't gotten any mail. One of them went down to the row of mailboxes at the driveway entrance to the building every
day to check, but no letters graced their box. No bills. No Modern Maturity magazine. No junk mail. Nothing.

Finding this rather odd, my mother mentioned it to one of her new neighbors. "Oh, you don't get your mail here," said the neighbor. "You have to go down to the post office to pick it up." Pick
it up? My mother couldn't believe what she was hearing. In the course of her 70+ years, the post office had always reliably delivered her mail. "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." that was their motto, right? She and my father got in the car and drove to the post office.
"Yes, indeed,"the postal clerk confirmed. "You have to come to the post office and pick
up your mail. We don't deliver in town."

"But the mail truck goes right past our building every day," my mother replied.

"Yes, ma'am, but that's the rural delivery truck," the clerk explained. "He doesn't deliver in town."

He went on to explain that they could come in during the post office hours and pick up their mail, but if they wanted to pick it up when the post office was closed, they would have to pay for a postal box. My mother found this completely absurd. "Do the people who mail me a letter get a discount on the stamps because you don't deliver," she asked.

The clerk looked puzzled. Apparently, no one had ever asked this question before. "No, ma'am," he replied.

"Well, they're not getting the same service, because their letters are not getting delivered to me. I have to do the rest of the job, so there should be some compensation," my mother explained her reasoning.

This logic was beyond the clerk's comprehension. He just told her that's the way it was. Welcome to life in rural Maryland. Undaunted, my mother asked to speak to the postmaster.
They had a similar conversation with the same results.

"Why can't the rural delivery truck just drop off our mail on his way?" my mother asked. "He
passes right by us."

"You're not within the rural delivery zone," he explained. "I'm sorry, but that's the way it is."

Well, not for my mother. She went home and dashed off letters to her Congressional Representative, her Senator, the Postmaster General and the President of the United States. She got a form letter in return from the President, but her Congressional Representative
and the post master general Postmaster General wrote back.

The Congressional Rep said he would look into it, and the Postmaster General told her pretty
much what the postal clerk and postmaster said - those are the rules, lady.

There followed an exchange of letters among my mother, the Postmaster General, an the Congressional Representative which resulted in little progress. My mother took to including the local newspaper editor and the Mayor of Emmetsburg in her correspondence. She also began circulating a petition.

Were the residents of Emmetsburg, MD second class citizens? Were they not entitled to a simple service such as delivery of mail to their very own mailboxes?

This went on for several months, but finally my mother began to win her battle. The Postmaster General agreed to have the mail delivered as long as certain conditions were met. The main condition being that the mail boxes at my parent's apartment building had to meet the Post Office's strict criteria.

I didn't even know the PO had strict criteria. The things you learn.

My mother met with her landlord, who was willing to cooperate. He set out to make the mailboxes Post Office compliant, but they ran into another roadblock.

In order to bring the mailboxes up to code, he needed a building permit and variance of some sort. So it was on to the zoning board. More letters, more paperwork. But finally my mother prevailed.

In November of 1991, the post office began delivering mail to my parent's apartment building. Unfortunately, she didn't have long to bask in her success. She died in January of 1992.

Written in loving memory of Margaret Dawson, 1916-1992

Posted by Cyberkat at January 27, 2002 12:20 PM