The Mail Carrier

Herbert Brandan hailed hardy and healthy from Upper New York State. Herbert, like all the inhabitants of Taylorville, never bragged. If they did, it would be that their town of one hundred-fifty sat six miles from the Canadian border and there was snow enough for everyone.

As he grew older, Brandan became restless. The farmer walked the hills and country roads more, rode the family horse and drove the buggy more frequently, and when automobiles became common, drove whenever he could. One day he could take the quiet of Taylorville no longer. He packed the suitcase his grandfather had emigrated with and headed South. He ended in Syracuse.

In the Greek-named city he met Alice Woreland. In time they married, then moved to northern Minnesota where the former-farmer could be in his beloved snow. To satisfy his restlessness, Herbert became a rural mail carrier. But between the time he left Taylorville and carried mail in the Midwest, something profound occurred.

Herbert, like all Brandans since the first shipload from County Clare, Ireland, was a reasonable fellow; he liked things to go his way. He seldom acquiesced, and only when he knew it was

impossible to get his way did he surrender. Like the time his father's horse, Terry, and he had a difference of opinion in the barn.

Herbert wanted the animal to go to the stable. Terry wanted to go outdoors. The young man didn't surrender until he lay on the manure pile with two hoof-marks imbedded in his chest.

The boy swore his chest was crushed. He also swore that if he lived through it, he would never force his will on any four legged beast again, and after he met Alice, he included her.

Unlike her future husband, Alice came from merchant stock. Every generation since the family had emigrated from Sussex, the Worelands claimed at least one member as a general store owner. The Worelands were not ordinary managers, but shrewd, demanding, profit-making owners. Cyrus Woreland, Alice's father, was no exception. For that matter, had the young girl not gone to college, she would probably have continued the family tradition herself.

When Herbert and Alice met, the character of the city girl reminded Brandan of Terry's, his horse. Instinctively the boy knew not to force anything on her, and so she pursued her education as he nodded agreement. In time, Alice was accepted to teach at Bemidji College, and Herbert agreed with that, too. After all, it allowed him to satisfy his back-road wunderlust and be in his blessed snow.

Anyone who's been a rural route carrier (Herbert pronounced it ROOT) knows the occupation has a life of its own. It keeps the driver busy but at his pace; lets him be with people only when he has to -- sorting mail at the post office or chatting with folks at the boxes -- it allows him travel, and above all, lets him be alone. It should be added that in the case of northern Minnesota, the job let Herb drive

many miles in the snow.

You have to be from the North to appreciate Winter in Minnesota, to have it in your blood, to understand it, and to love it.

To the Northerner, the snow, ice, sleet, drifts, blizzards, cold-cold-cold, don't threaten him, they welcome him. At every moment they welcome the hardy to share the great white with those forces that give the region its personality and charm. And Herbert Brandan, fully accustomed to it from his Taylorville youth, loved it and related to it as profoundly as he did with his own soul.

Herb, as his route-folk called him, came to love delivering the mail as much as the Winter itself. Now he could travel the back-roads that put him in his Heaven. When Herb waited at the railroad crossing or let cows cross the road, he eyed the packages he carried with the curiosity of a lover. What could be in those boxes? In all those envelopes? How can people have so much to say?

In time, Herb gained the expertise of all mail carriers; he could deduce the contents with considerable accuracy, but that didn't diminish his joy in delivering. Every time he stuffed a rubber-banded roll into a metal box he felt he was presenting the Crown Jewels to the King himself.

But the real reason Herb Brandan enjoyed his route was the driving. What created horror to a Southerner who never saw snow and dreaded driving in it uplifted the Taylorville carrier to levels bordering on ecstasy. In short, Herb loved to drive in the Winter.

Brandan loved to speed up after coming out of an icy curve so his tires would spin and swoosh him in a circle. If it pleased him giggle-ingly, he'd back up and spin around it again. He loved to see how great a drift he could flatten or how many times he had to back up

before bulldozing through. He loved to see the drifts reach the telephone wires, crush the tops of too-flat barns, of eight-foot ditches level with the road.

And the blizzards -- they were Heaven sent by God Himself just for him. Herb smiled every time he had to stick his head out of the window because the snow came so fast and with such force that the windshield wipers couldn't keep ahead of it.

"Thirteen days in '62," he remembered one evening. "That's right, thirteen days I drove without once seeing the road between Beaver Dam and the south end of Pattow. Had to follow the telephone poles 'cause there was no road whatsoever. Now, that was a Winter!"

And the ice. How Herb loved to walk to the car to find that last night's rain had frozen and welded the car-doors shut! He loved to kick the door to break the freeze. More than once he felt he was getting even with Terry for sending him through the barn door.

Herb would stop the car to watch the Southerners spinning on the straight-away en route the ski slopes. "Bless the folks from Madison, Wisconsin, as they slide down the bugger'n hills," he would say, as he enjoyed day after day, winter after winter, on his mail route enjoying every icy mile.

Through the years Herb used only one kind of car: A six cylinder Chevrolet, stick shift, and he never used chains. He claimed, "If you know how to drive, you don't need those confounded metal fender clunkers. Give me a pair of snow tires and I'll show you mail delivery!" The proof of his belief was that he never got stuck. If he did, you can be sure that no one ever heard about it.

His route-folk swore that if Herb Brandan couldn't get through,

NO one could, that God Himself had ordered everyone to take a day off. It was well known that if the New Yorker ever got on the road, he always got through. That is, except once.

It was on St. Valentine's Day, l97l. Of all the days next to Mother's Day, Christmas, and St. Patrick's Day, Herb held the Day of the Heart as most sacred. He said that he would get the mail through if he had to carry it. But in l97l, God and the elements had something else in mind.

It started back in October, on the fourth of the month. Upper Minnesota was hit, or blessed, depending on your outlook, by an eight-inch snow that never left the ground until the first week of May, and then amidst flurries and fluffy showers and a fading blizzard on June 9. But, as sometimes happens, most of the winter came early. By January first, no cold-footed gopher of the North saw a flake until that fateful Valentine's Day.

With six weeks of near-Spring, Herb Brandan became bored. He moaned to Alice, "This is Minnesota, not Madison!" But the night of February l3, Mr. Brandan's winter wishes were fulfilled all at once.

When our Taylorville transplant looked out the window he experienced a sensation as dramatic as when he lay on the manure pile on his father's farm, only far more joyful. His wildest Northern dream had been granted. He was so overwhelmed that he paid no attention to Alice staying home because Bemidji classes were closed, the State Police issued an order not to travel the back-roads, that even the ski resorts had to close. You see, Herb was so ecstatic that he lost touch with reality.

Blindly, the mail carrier shoveled off his trusty Chevy coup. A few scoops from the front tires, a little rocking back and forth to get a

good start to ensure a straight run, and off he went into a wild world of white.

Know that Bemidji has seen real snows, but nothing had ever matched this, because nothing could match it. Telephone wires wove like black threads through white mattresses. Housetops could barely be seen, only little brick chimneys with thin columns of smoke were visible. And the air - it bellowed at no less than forty miles an hour. It was so furious that it drove snow through minute cracks in walls. One literally could not see past his nose.

No one knows how far Herb Brandan got. Signs showed he had burrowed farther than a shrew in sand. But though he'd been on his route for thirty-five years, even his intuition could not guide him through. Within minutes the coup was half full of snow from the joyful carrier hanging out the window to navigate.

Residents do know that the mail carrier finally gave up, that he shoveled the snow out of the Chevy, removed the panel between the back seat and trunk, used his survival blanket, ate the box of emergency Stone Wheat Thin crackers and jar of frozen raspberry jam, and resorted the mail.

One can only guess how the sixty-five year-old spent his time as he waited for history's most vicious snowfall to subside. Evidence suggested that he pondered the contents of each letter, for all the Valentine cards were on the front seat, junk mail on the driver's, newspapers and magazines on the back, bills in the middle, and personal letters next to the door. The old boys who drove the other routes figured he whiled away the time contemplating the contents.

They said that a trained eye can deduce the contents of an envelop from its outside by smell, thickness, whether it's folded evenly or

bunched, if it's a check, short note scribbled on a torn sheet, typed document, passionate or business. Herbert Brandan had perfected the art, and studying each piece he must have figured the dealings of everyone on his route on that snow-blinding day. But no one will ever know for sure, because the old boy was never seen again, not even after the huge snow plows and blowers had gone through scraping the road down to hard-pack, not after the run-off and fields turned brown, not even after dogs were let loose to roam the forests for the sixty-five year-old.

For the man from Taylorville, the one who loved snow and ice and sleet and blizzard, simply vanished.

And ever since, Alice sighs warmly every time she reads Robert Frost's poem, "Snowbound," to her class, for she knows that her husband had found his road, his Heaven, his place of eternal snow, and if he gets his way, he's probably there right now spinning around corners and delivering celestial mail to angelic route-folk.