Good News: As Close as Your Mailbox

No matter what you have heard, seen or read, things are getting better in America.

I know there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. I know that you cannot pick up a newspaper or a magazine without reading doom and gloom stories that tell you:

1--The average American couple must now work 76.3 years in order to afford their first house. So,

2--By the time they can afford their first house, they will be ready for a nursing home. And,

3--Nobody can afford a nursing home.

And what are the most popular shows on TV? They are “reality” shows that show actual, live pictures of Americans being arrested, handcuffed and thrown in jail.

How come we don’t have any TV shows showing actual, live pictures of kids getting straight A’s, not taking drugs and going to college?

Because that is not real news. Good news has not been real news for a long time.

Today, this changes. Today, there is good news.

If I asked you what you thought of mail service in America, you would probably start frothing at the mouth.

You would tell me that current projections show that a first-class stamp will cost more than a pound of sirloin by 1996.

You would tell me that you can remember when they delivered mail twice a day and how a letter mailed from Los Angeles in the morning would reach Boston that same afternoon.

And I remember from “Father Knows Best” how the postman would come up the front steps and Bud would be throwing his ball against the side of the house and the postman would say: “Looks like Betty got her acceptance to State U., Bud! Pretty soon it’ll be your turn!” And Bud got real sad looking because he knew he’d never get accepted to State U. because Mrs. Grunion was flunking him in biology because he ate the frog he was supposed to dissect for the final exam.

But I got an important message from that show: The postman was your pal. The postman was a member of your family. The postman shared your sorrows and joy.

Today, the postman is a stranger.

Once upon a time in America, mail was delivered right to your front door, stuck through a little brass slot. (Today, of course, we could never build doors with little brass slots because serial killers would stick wire hooks through them and unlatch our doors and murder us in our beds.)

Where I now live there is no mail delivery to the houses. Instead, letters are delivered to “cluster-boxes,” which are aluminum boxes set on a post. Each house gets one compartment in the cluster box.

It makes sense. It is efficient. Instead of going up and down 20 walks, the letter carrier drives up to the cluster box, delivers all the mail at once and drives away.

But you never get to meet the letter carriers. They are just the nameless, faceless, bureaucrats who fold up the envelopes marked: “PHOTOS.”

A friend had mailed me a letter that had postage due. My friend had put a single 25-cent stamp on it, but the letter was overweight.

Opinion polls show that when the average American is asked “How much can a letter weigh before you have to put a second stamp on it?” the answers range from “six pounds” to “as much as a Toyota.”

I always put too much postage on envelopes because I know what happens when you put too little on: The letter gets sent to the National Too-Little-Postage Cluster Box Dump in Yuma, Ariz., where, if it is not picked up in person within three working days, it gets turned over to Maury Povich to see if he can get a juicy TV show out of it.

So this friend mails me a letter with postage due on it. And what happens?

The letter carrier delivers it to my cluster box anyway. And he writes me a little note and leaves it for me. It says: “Please leave 20 cents in box. Thank you.”

Which means my letter carrier has paid the money out of his own pocket and trusts me to pay him back.

I don’t mind admitting that I wept like a baby when I read that note.

Is this becoming a kinder and gentler nation or what? The signs are all around us. We just have to look for them.

I am going to write a letter to President Bush praising my letter carrier. I am going to make this a real heavy letter and I am not going to put enough postage on it.

Because I want the president to get a note in his cluster box from his letter carrier making his day.

And I am going to put that 20 cents in my cluster box and pay my letter carrier back.

But don’t expect to see it on TV.