My Ammerrikka: Going Postal

There’s this post office in southern California that has long lines and two clerks, both women, one Hispanic, one white.

The Hispanic lady is most probably Mexican with roots in the area longer than most of the transplants. She has an edge of course like most postal workers that makes you think she can throw the evil eye at will, or snap at you at any moment; and if you really bug her, she also can reroute your package via the slow train to Kazakhstan. She would prefer not to do this so try not to bug her. Be nice. Underneath all that implied going postal threat however, she really seems rather nice. Down to earth. Competent, motherly, warm, overweight, middle aged, wise, indigenous. Thick, slightly wavy black hair in a pony tail, no makeup. No pretense, warm smile, nobody’s fool. If she didn’t hold the sovereign power of the U.S. mail over me, I might even like her. I was hoping to get her when my turn came, but that’s not how it worked out. I got the other lady instead.

Oh, the vagaries of the bureaucracy! Life is a crap shoot, is it not? Have you not had certain unfortunate, bad luck-of-the-draw experiences at your own supermarket or bank? Yes, as it turned out, I got the lady who thinks she is Veronica Lake- sultry, gamin screen legend of the 1940’s who played opposite Joel McCrea in Sullivan’s Travels, Preston Sturges' madcap, classic social satire of Ammerrikka during the height of the depression. Lake's slightly cocker spaniel hair became iconic for its "peek-a-boo" style: shoulder length blond tresses covering one eye and part of the face, a distinct come-hither look. Except that the postal Veronica Lake is not a gamin but elderly- early sixties- and the tresses though carefully coiffed are pure iron gray. She is thin like the star of old, wears lots of make up though neatly applied, rimless eyeglasses and sounds a bit like Billie Burke in The Wizard of Oz. 

Retro Hollywood splendor, a steamy vapor that seeps through the San Andreus fault and envelops all the surrounding towns. 

Already I’m missing my gum cracking, not so cuddly black postal gal back in the Bronx- sassy, no bullshit- but my package will get there, and if it doesn’t, it won’t be her fault.

But back to the postal Veronica Lake, who considers the people on the line to constitute her rightful audience. It’s the first week of May and she addresses her audience: Mother’s Day already! Anyone know any good Mother’s Day jokes? Ha Ha. And she winks mischievously like a starlet of the forties while continuing to stamp parcels. The only thing that comes to mind in the way of jokes is that back where I come from, “mother” is half a word, but I desist. She likes to wink a lot in that knowing, playful way and yet I do not feel she is happy, or particularly nice.

When my turn comes she comments on the fact that I am sending a package to New York. Are you from New York? Just visiting? Tourist? Disney? Family? Wanna live here? Wanna go back? Too much crazy California stuff? Ha Hah. And she winks. The questions are fired off in succession one after another with no pausing for answers, not that I want to. What I really want is for her to shut up. I feel she is angry though she is smiling. Yet because I wish the package to reach its destination before the end of the following summer, I politely inquire if she is from California.

Bingo! Oh yes, four generations! We go waaay back! She’s ebullient, smug. She winks as she says this. As I make my way toward the door, hoping not to have incurred too much further wrath, she yells after me: Mayflower too!

Mayflower! Well I’ll be gosh darned. . . .

Turns out I asked the right question after all. She was able to do her schtick, pull rank, on me, clueless Noo Yawk child of immigrants that I am, and the indigenous Latina too, who has to work next to this person ‘till time immemorial, and whom the gods decreed would not be my postal clerk on that particular day.

Preston Sturges where are you when we need you??? You never would have ended it like this.