Neither scorpions, snakes nor storms stop this mailman
Throwback to Old West treks deep into Ariz. desert
AVRA VALLEY — The question was about dogs, the snarling kind that chase letter carriers in comic strips, but David DiPalermo came up with a more interesting answer about the menaces of a mail route.
“I’ve walked down a path to someone’s house and run into a rattlesnake,” he said. “And I have had scorpions in a mailbox. I actually get to see a lot of wildlife out here.”
DiPalermo’s “out here” hugs the edges of long, mostly straight, partly unpaved roads west of the Tucson Mountains and along the edges of Saguaro National Park, a patch of rural Pima County the U.S. Postal Service has designated Route 9 in ZIP code 85743. At 55 miles, it is among the longest routes in the area.
At a time when so many people correspond via e-mail or text message and pay bills online, the 58-year-old DiPalermo carries on a tradition as old as the West, delivering letters and parcels to the widest and most open spaces of Arizona. He’s been at it 38 years, 27 in Avra Valley.
His route carries him deep into rural Arizona, where mail delivery carries with it echoes of history — thundering teams of horses that helped deliver letters and parcels by stagecoach, the constant threat of Indian attacks and outlaw ambushes, even a visit by Mark Twain.
Today, the frontier drama has faded into the landscape, replaced by the fourwheel whine of DiPalermo’s extended-cab pickup and the chatter of AMradio. A few old-fashioned trappings remain in DiPalermo’s routine, and, on a summer afternoon, a bit of the Wild West hangs in the air.
“It gets a little iffy at times during the monsoon season,” DiPalermo said. “I can see the dust coming in from the south, so I start moving faster and hope I can finish before it hits.”
DiPalermo starts each day at 8 a.m. in a cubicle in the Mountain View Post Office on North Thorny dale Road in suburban Tucson.
Before he can deliver the mail, he
must sort it, sliding envelopes, magazines and advertising circulars into individual slots, one for each customer.
A machine has already presorted much of the mail by address, part of the reason carriers no longer punch in at 5:30 a.m.
DiPalermo retrieves packets of letters, leaving the parcels and ad circulars for last.
“The parcels seem to be a little light today,” he said, “which is good for me.”
Packages mean detouring off the road and hoping the recipient is home. Still, DiPalermo won’t complain about the extra work. Electronic communications mean fewer bills and postcards in the main, and the post office increasingly competes for business with commercial delivery services such as UPS and FedEx.
“The letter volume has dropped over the years,” he said, “so it’s good see people getting packages.”
When he finishes sorting the last of the circulars, DiPalermo hauls out a tangle of webbed straps that almost no one else in the warehouse uses anymore.
He uses the straps to bundle the mail, not unlike the way schoolkids once bundled their books. He sticks a note on each bundle with a number and loads the bundles into a bin to roll out to his truck.
Most of the other carriers use trays and cardboard bins, but DiPalermo likes the way the strapped bundles fit in his truck. He can grab a new bundle quickly and stuff it behind the seat until he needs it.
“I’ll keep using them until I retire,” he said.
A rich history
For about four years in the mid-1800s, the Butterfield Overland Mail Co. contracted with the U.S. Postal Department to deliver mail by stagecoach to residents of Tucson and other parts of the Arizona Territory. The coaches made the trip twice a week, typically on Sunday and Wednesday, connecting St. Louis with the West Coast.
Butterfield sold passenger tickets, but only the hardiest of travelers booked passage. Mark Twain was one of them and wrote of the experience in “Roughing It”:
“We three were the only passengers, this trip. We sat on the back seat, inside. About all the rest of the coach was full of mailbags — for we had three days’ delayed mails with us.
“Almost touching our knees, a perpendicular wall of mail matter rose up to the roof. There was a great pile of it strapped on top of the stage, and both the fore and hind boots were full. We had twentyseven hundred pounds of it aboard, the driver said.”
Drivers found the route perilous from the start, vulnerable to attacks by bandits and Indians. With the start of the Civil War in 1861, the federal government abandoned the southerly route.
The Pony Express, a short-lived enterprise meant to move mail fast- er, never offered service through New Mexico and Arizona.
The ruins of the old Apache Pass mail station remain outside Willcox at the Fort Bowie National Historic Site, where some of the most famous battles in the Arizona Indian wars played out.
After the Civil War, mail delivery in Arizona grew more reliable, with the advent of star routes and the arrival of the railway.
Route with a view
With the mail loaded in his white Dodge Dakota pickup, DiPalermo starts his second commute of the day. The first took him from home to the Mountain View Post Office. The second, from the post office to the first stop on his route, is his favorite.
He follows a two-lane highway across Interstate 10 and into the Tucson Mountains, where he enters the western portion of Saguaro National Park. The highway climbs over the pass and leaves the city behind in a rear view filled with cactus and desert brush.
Out here, DiPalermo enjoys a bit of an old cowboy’s sense of freedom.
“I get to drive my own truck” (the Postal Service pays him for mileage), “I don’t have to wear a uniform” (today, he wears a blue polo shirt, khaki car- go shorts and brown sneakers), “and there’s no one looking over my shoulder.”
DiPalermo eats his lunch on the drive over the mountain. He usually listens to talk radio on the road, though sometimes he turns the radio off and enjoys the solitary serenity, an antidote to the measured chaos of the post office.
As much as DiPalermo likes what he does, he never planned it this way. He studied animal science at the University of Arizona.
To earn money while he worked toward his degree, he got a job with the Postal Service as a substitute letter carrier, filling in on routes on weekends or when a regular carrier was out sick or on vacation.
After graduation, he didn’t like his job prospects in animal science. As he considered his future, a full-time position opened up on a rural route, and DiPalermo realized the money was too good to pass up.
“I just stayed on and went full time,” he said. “Tucson is a great place to deliver mail. I mean, I’ve had to deliver in snow maybe two times, and I kind of liked that. It was a nice change from the heat. I don’t think I’d enjoy this as much anywhere else.”
Making work fun
DiPalermo descends into Avra Valley on Picture Rocks Road and hangs a left at Sandario Road, heading south. As he reaches the first mailbox, he makes the Maneuver, signaling the start of mail delivery on Route 9.
Letter carriers must drive on the right side of the road with traffic, which is why the driver’s side in a regulation mail vehicle is on the right side, affording the carrier easy access to mailboxes.
DiPalermo drives his own vehicle and has never spent the money to add controls to the right side. Thus, the Maneuver. DiPalermo scoots over toward the truck’s right side, straddling the center console. He stretches his left foot back to the left side to control the accelerator and brake pedals and keeps his left hand on the steering wheel. He can now reach the mailbox out of the right side of the truck.
“It took me a little while,” he said. “At first, it’s tough on your knees, but you learn how to make it work.”
In all his years performing the Maneuver, DiPalermo has never had an accident. The Postal Service figures he’s safely driven more than 1 million miles and gave DiPalermo an award for the achievement.
“I do get strange looks sometimes,” he said. “Sometimes, I will drive with my hand low on the wheel so it looks like no one’s driving. It gets lonely here. ... You’ve got to have a little fun somehow.”
On the route, DiPalermo said he can run on autopilot, turning off the highway into scattered subdivisions with more open space than urban dwellers enjoy. On rural routes, mailboxes are clustered together or placed on one side of the street to reduce driving.
He delivers mostly to homes, though his route includes the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and the national park visitor center. He knows most of his customers by name and address and knows how they like their packages delivered.
“I get to talk to people sometimes,” he said. “You make friendships. You get to know people really well. Unfortunately, when you’ve been on the job as long as I have, you lose a few, too.”
DiPalermo can see the end of his route now. The real end, the one with the sunset. He plans to retire within the next two years if all goes as planned. He hopes his truck makes it to the last stop with him.
“I’m probably starting to get a little ‘retire-itis,’ ” he said. “I still like my job a lot. I’ve seen a lot of changes, but I also deliver to people who are diehards. They’ll mail letters no matter what.”
And after spending a day delivering letters and checks and packages and greeting cards across the Arizona desert, he counts one last perk of his job.
“I don’t have to take my work home with me,” he said.