Random Memory: The Straw-Hat-Mailman

This is a bit different from my usual posts, but I wanted to share two memories from my childhood that I still remember at random times and smile about. These memories are both about the same person and, although I've long since forgotten his name, I'll never forget his kindness. 

When I was young, the mail carriers who visited our house would change every few years, but there was this one mailman who visited our neighborhood for at least several years. He always wore a large straw hat and carried a huge mailbag, since he would park at one end of the street and walk the entire length of the street, on both sides, before returning to his truck. 

I was about eight to twelve years old (so, maybe 2010 to 2014?) when my siblings and I took up a fascination with rubber band guns. We would make them from a forked stick and a twig, with a single rubber band to connect the “trigger” (the twig) to the “gun” (the forked stick). Then, we would use a second rubber band as the “bullet” by looping it over the stick-end opposite of the fork and then also around the base of the trigger. It worked the opposite of a real gun – you had to pull on the trigger to avoid shooting, then release the trigger to “fire”. Anyway, this was the hobby of me and my siblings for a long time, and we would create arsenals of rubber band guns. However, the average rubber band was not ideal, since they were often too short to stretch the length of our “guns”, and our chronic losses of rubber bands severely depleting the home office supply. Since we were homeschooled, we were always playing outside. As a result, when the straw-hat-mailman would come, we would almost always greet him. One day, when we had been gone on vacation for a while, we received a bundle of mail, that had been collected during the time we had been away, from the straw-hat-mailman, and it was held together by the most wonderful rubber band – it was long, thick, durable, and wonderfully elastic. It become a prized “bullet”. After that discovery, we began shamelessly asking the straw-hat-mailman each day if he had any of those big rubber bands to spare. Usually, he had one or two, but I’ll never forget the day he surprised us. One day, he was so excited as he walked up to our house, and he pulled from his bag a MASSIVE ball of rubber bands! He must have collected them from the post office, and we were thrilled. He supplied us with hundreds of rubber bands that day. This happened maybe a decade or more ago, but I’ll never forget the kind straw-hat-mailman who made my day with a ball of rubber bands. 

Another story about this same mailman is when my family decided to raise chickens, but we ordered the chicks online. They were shipped in a box with holes, but they didn’t arrive the day we expected them to. However, after the straw-hat-mailman delivered our mail, he returned later that day with the box of chicks. He arrived at the door, knocked, and one of my sisters answered it. When she heard the cheeping from the box, she left the door open and ran screaming through the house, yelling “the chicks are here!”. Our favorite mailman was left, laughing, at the door, with the box of chicks in his arms until my mom came to see what the ruckus was. We learned that the chicks would have been delivered the next day, but the mailman made a separate trip simply because he saw the address on the box at the post office and recognized it as our house. 

While his name is long lost to my memory, I’ll never forget our favorite straw-hat-wearing mailman. He could have simply done his job, walked from house to house, delivered the mail, and thought nothing more of it than that it was his job, but he didn't do that. He made my childhood special and left me with a cherished memory of someone who went a little farther, did a little more, just to bring a smile to a child's face. I wonder where he is today, and I pray that God has blessed him immensely. 

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, 

clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, 

gentleness and patience.

Colossians 3:12