Story by Jon Stalnaker AKA The Studebaker Dude
I was a USPS Letter Carrier for about ten years. I loved the job, and I eventually successfully bid on my dream route in Stockton, California. It was a residential route around the Lincoln Center Shopping Center. My Uncle Carlos managed the shopping center, and he used to send out a newspaper called the Lincoln Center Chronicle. He always wrote a column in that paper, and he called it” Shootin’ the Breeze with Carlos Helton”. I always thought that was the coolest thing, and I would read it, but it was mostly a gossip piece intended for the merchants in the center. I was still proud to be his nephew, and I wanted to get the center put on my route through the route adjustment process. I was successful in that endeavor after being on the route for a couple of years. I was the kind of employee who could get what I wanted by being good at what I did and not afraid to ask for it. I was good at selling management on the idea. I was so proud to take the mail up to the office and hand it to Uncle Carlos. He was very proud that I was the new mailman. Later, after I retired, I started writing my own column for the Dixon Tribune, and I called that column “Shootin’ the Breeze with the Studebaker Dude,” in his honor. He didn’t live long enough to read my gossip column, which makes me a little sad. That’s the price I paid for being the youngest of my generation.
Lincoln Center was a shopping center built in the late 40s. They used to have aerial photographs in the window showing the center and surrounding houses every year as it grew. I bought a house on that route, and looking at the pictures, I could see that my house was built in 1951, the same year I was born. I felt so at home on that route, and it was a big decision for me to give up that route when I had felt the need to pursue a career in postal management. If I were the kind of guy who likes routine, I would have retired on that assignment. My mother lived on that route too. It was a thrill to be her mailman, too. By the way, Uncle Carlos was her older brother.
I was delivering the mail about 3 houses down from where my mother lived when all of a sudden, birds were dropping on the ground all around me. It wasn’t just a couple of birds either. By my estimation, the body count was in the 3-digit range easily. I’ve gotta tell you it was a very freaky experience. My mind was imagining some sort of lethal gas was pouring into the atmosphere. There were no shots being fired so it wasn’t someone with a gun. What did I have to figure this out with? My mind went directly to the Twilight Zone as it looked to me like something I would have seen on my favorite TV show. It looked like they were all dead; they were just lying there still.
I knocked on the door of the house to warn them that something strange was going on. The mail must go through, so I kept moving, as I had only just begun my route and I had to get to work. I knocked on the door the next day to see if they had found out what had happened. I don’t remember who they called, but they told me someone came out to find out. As it turned out, the birds were not dead, they were just passed out drunk. The tree in front of that house was covered in little berries that had fermented in the heat. A large flock of birds were eating those berries and got passed out drunk. They slept it off and started flying away on their own when they woke up. So much for sending a story idea to Rod Serling… Carrying mail was one of my favorite jobs. I also have many stories about inspecting carriers and some of the wild things that I saw doing that job.
