Through rain, snow, sleet and shine

Summer Crosby

Francis Higgs does a lot faster job sorting the mail at 72 years of age than I could only hope of doing at 22 years of age. She doesn’t even think as she picks of a stack of mail, glancing at the address before placing it into the corresponding slot. For 31 years, Higgs, or “Francie” as her coworkers call her, has been arriving at the post office at around 7 a.m. to meet the mail truck, sort the mail and then pile it into the front seat of her vehicle to be delivered.

“It took me a long time to here,” she says, sharing a quick chuckle with one of her drivers whom she oversees, Dawn Brown. An envelope has been addressed to a particular household in a particularly amusing way. “When I first started, it was very confusing and very overwhelming. But after a while, it becomes routine and automatic that you don’t even have to think anymore.”

Higgs learned of the job from a friend, Lois Mohr.

“She asked me if I knew there was an opening at the post office and I said no, I hadn’t, but that I would check in to it,” she said. “I didn’t think I’d be here for as long as I have, but I love the job. It’s a good job. The people on my route are fantastic and the people that I work with are wonderful.”

She says she doesn’t get bored, as there is something new every day. Higgs also said that job helps to keep her young and without it she’d probably feel as old as she is.

“If it wasn’t for this job, I’d probably act like a 72 year old, and I don’t feel like I’m 72,” she said.

It’s Saturday, and Higgs is working with Brown and Paula Jenks. Her other driver, Jacque Becker, is off. Higgs said she works with Becker two days of the week and Brown the other four. Arriving at 7:30 a.m., they chat as they wait for the truck to arrive. Hearing the truck arrive, Higgs says she thinks the truck has arrived. Around the post office, the workers are in tune to those kinds of sounds.

“I guess we should open the door,” Higgs suggests. “He, or she, might want to come in, I don’t know.”

It’s more mail than usual for a Saturday as the previous day the post office was closed because of the New Year’s Day holiday. The girls get right to work. The sorting process itself takes three long hours. She said that most people don’t realize the work that goes on behind the scenes.

“They just assume that we come in here and it’s all ready to go so we just have to pick it up, but that’s not quite right.” she said. “There’s a little more to the deal than that.”

She said that it can be frustrating sometimes because although they try to do their best, not everyone is perfect.

“No matter how hard you try, everyone makes mistakes,” she says, realizing that she had put one letter into the wrong slot. She catches this one and corrects it. Coming across a piece from Washington, she asks, “Anybody want to go to Washington?” Once all of the mail finally been sorted, and yes, even the “junk mail” goes, Higgs pulls trays out from underneath the counter and begins to rubber band each bundle and set it into the tray.

She delivers to just over 180 boxes on her route, 180 also on the other side, which Brown and Becker are responsible for. When she first started, Higgs was responsible for the entire route. It was only about 54 boxes in the beginning, but grew steadily as people moved into the area. The sorting boxes are in order of the mail delivery route, so when they get placed into the trays, the mail is also in the order it needs to be.

“It’ll feel good when we have all this sorted because then we can go sit down in our cars,” Higgs said. “Once in a little while, you a get a little tired than most days, but you just have to keep going along, but it all works out.”

Finally finished, and grateful to be done, Higgs loads the mail into a cart and wheels it outside, placing it in her vehicles. Outside the roads are bit slippery from a slight rain from the night before as Higgs loads the mail into her car. She said she’s been pretty lucky with the weather and fortunate to have stayed safe. She said freezing rain is the only precipitation that bothers her. The worst incident she remembers is getting stuck on a railroad track covered in about six inches of snow.

“It was back when I did the whole route, there were about 54 stops back then, and I was up on the bridge by Second Creek, and we had a lot of snow. My front tire got stuck on one side and my rear tire on the other side,” she said. “I didn’t have a shovel and the first think they teach you is to keep the mail safe so I took it out and set it over on a snow bank. I knew that there was a train due at 25 minutes after 12 and it was close to that time, so I knew I didn’t have long. I just threw the chains underneath the tires hard and was able to get out.”

Inside the car, Higgs puts on a Lillie Knauls CD. Knowles is not only a well know gospel singer, but she is Higg’s personal friend.

“Listening to her does my heart good,” she says. “I can be stressed out, but her music just mellows me right out.” And after a stressful Saturday morning, Higgs can use the relaxation.

With Knauls’ music coming through the speakers, Higgs heads down Mullan Road West first, quickly pulling up to each box, removing the rubber band, while she opens the lid and finally sliding the mail in. She also pulls out any mail that is to be mailed.

“I’ve got a lot of practice,” she says, when asked about how accurately she positions the large vehicle next to the mail boxes. “I can probably back up just as fast as I can go forward. I haven’t tried it though.”

Coming off of Mullan Road, Higgs realizes she forgot to slide a small package into Charlie Stevens’ box. Higgs comments that she should have sat it up front where she could see it, rather than laying it in the back seat. Knowing that he might need whatever is inside, she turns around and heads back up to his mail box. Back on track, she heads over to the roads behind the hospital, joking that “I could probably drive this in my sleep, but I haven’t tried it either.”

She points out a mail box that looks like a cow and says that up on Brown’s route, there’s a neat mail box that looks like a fish. She said she appreciates the larger mail boxes, wishing that they were all big because sometimes she has trouble fitting all of an individual’s mail inside. With her window down most of the time as she goes from mail box to mail box, it’s a wonder she doesn’t get cold. Higgs said that after a while she just gets used to it, but notes that’s why she had a good heater on her vehicle.

The entire route is about 126 miles, and takes about 3 hours. Higgs said that she’ll retire when she can’t work anymore, but until then she’ll be up six days out of the week to meet the mail truck.