Story by Jon Stalnaker, aka The Studebaker Dude
Growing up in Stockton, California, in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, I had the opportunity to know of Alex Spanos before he became rich and famous. When he bought the San Diego Chargers football team is probably when my Oklahoma friends first heard of him. My first recollection of the Spanos family was when my brother dated one of the daughters in junior high school. This was before Alex Spanos became a big real estate developer in town. Back then, the Spanos family must have lived on my cousin Alan’s mail route. Just like everyone that knew Alan, he became your friend. More on Spanos later.
When I began my career at the post office in Stockton, I took whatever job to get in. I worked two years as a clerk on the night shifts before I was able to transfer over to the mailman job that was my goal. I wanted to do the job that Alan had already been doing and now was my chance. It takes a while, working as a substitute bouncing around from route to route before you can settle in and get your own route. I bid on two other routes before I finally got the route of my dreams at Lincoln Center and the neighborhood around it. BTW, Alex Spanos lived one block away from my route and one of his daughters and his housekeeper lived on this route.
It’s a little jumbled up in my memory now but somewhere in this period of time, I applied and was selected into the 204B program where I was in training to be a supervisor. I remember being a newbie supervisor at the office where Alan worked. Alan and his peers in this office were seasoned carriers and they were asking me about things. It occurred to me that I should be asking them these questions. That was when I decided to give up the program and go back to being the letter carrier until I felt that I had mastered that job. They said I would never get back into management after quitting, but they were wrong. (That’s another story.)
During this same period of time, Alan became a 204B supervisor and was on his first Saturday alone running the office. I was on the route that delivered to the Spanos office building that day. It was not my route and sometimes office buildings are not open on Saturdays, and that was the case for the Spanos building (but I didn’t know that yet). I grabbed the mail for this building and walked right in to deliver it. It was quiet in the hallway and to my left there was a door open and I saw someone working in there. I continued to my first delivery down the hall at the other end and while I was walking down there, I thought to myself, “I should’ve said something to that guy.” Just about that time, I heard the door I had entered in slam shut.
I then realized I was locked inside this hallway with no way out. All the office doors were locked. I started to panic; I was looking for a fire alarm to set off but there were none. I considered breaking a glass door into one of the offices and that would bring the police. But I looked out the glass window at the end of the corridor and there was a street and a stop sign within view. I pounded on the window to get the attention of the people in the cars and that worked. They came over to the window, and I told them I was locked in and asked them to go to the post office just a few blocks away and tell them, which they did.
Poor Alan, his first day working alone and his knucklehead cousin gets himself locked in the Spanos building. But Alan was a cool-headed man that knew everybody in town, even Alex Spanos. So he called Spanos at home and within a few minutes, he was there to let out the idiot mailman, me. I was so proud of Alan and “the guy that knows everybody” that he was.
Later, Alan gave up supervision and went back to being a great mailman and I eventually got back into management and gave up my dream job. As much as I liked being a mailman and delivering mail at Lincoln Center and eventually my own house, when I bought one on my route, I’m just not cut out for routine. I had mastered that job and was ready to begin so many different jobs that were awaiting me at the post office.