When Sam gets the load back to the mailroom, the next job is to sort out big packages and boxes from flats (light cardboard and heavy paper envelopes) and letters. Mail does send Haverford delivery trucks onto campus, it doesn't do so when Haverford needs them—first thing. itself.“Nah, I never had no problems,” Sam says reassuringly.“ Most people will stop for a red truck.”Īlthough U.S. Then you've got to cock your wheel right and back smoothly up to the loading doors—or at least without scraping walls or red, white, and blue post office trucks, which are invariably lined up in the eastern half of the alley, closest to the P.O. Especially in the morning, contending with other delivery vehicles, school buses, and late-for-work drivers, things can get hairy. To do that you're actually breaking left into the curb lane, and then backing up against the oncoming tide of metal, Lancaster being a two-lane asphalt. or so, so you've got to force the big Union truck into the car stream, coming out of Haverford gate, plowing west and overshooting the mark a little, the alley between the Tinder Box (Since 1928!) cigar store and the alley abutting the post office. run is that Route 30 traffic never really slacks off until 8 p.m. Sam is quiet, efficient, friendly in a low-key, let's-get-this-job-done rhythm, smiling carefully, like the actor, Omar Epps. He does this with one or two huge orange hampers, depending on volume (Mondays and holidays like Christmas and Valentine's Day, and school openings in late August and September, are the heaviest). First order of business is to hit the Haverford Post Office, opposite the College entrance on Lancaster Avenue, and trundle home all the incoming packages, boxes, and flats that have accumulated since yesterday. blues away, says hi to Calvin Riley, the Mail Center manager, and Fred Howard, his co-worker, who've both come in, then unlocks the back doors and warms up one of two big red Union City Body Company delivery trucks parked in the working bay. He switches on WDAS radio to chase the a.m. Sam McKinnon, a tall, handsome guy with a cleanhead haircut, is the first one into the mailroom in the southernmost first floor reaches of Whitehead Campus Center, in the middle of the first July heatwave.
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