The Way We Live Now

I bought a book of stamps the other day. This was quite unusual for me since I write exactly two checks every month and these are required to be sent via US Mail. When I bought this last book it got me thinking  about how we live now as compared to what I call the "simpler time" in which I grew up in Ridgewood. The mail was a much bigger part of our lives in those days. Now it is mostly an afterthought and sometimes a downright inconvenience. When I am feeling very patient I will go down to my local post office and peak in at the people waiting on line to transact their business. Nobody is happy to be there, especially the people working behind the bullet proof glass. It's not that I live in a bad neighborhood, it's only that people become so infuriated at having to wait on line that even the most calm among us might have a bad day and want to throw something after an infuriating wait to do something seemingly simple like pick up a package. The folks at Fedex and UPS I'm sure have seen these lines for themselves and figured out there was a buck to be had in making sure nobody had to suffer in this way.

It wasn't always like this and at one time working at the post office was a respectable middle class profession. Our mailman in Ridgewood lived in Midland Park and knew everyone on his route, including the kids. If you stepped out of line and you might find yourself on the receiving end of a stern warning to watch your step. He was a nice fellow who liked his job and did it well. The little bit of crowd control in the neighborhood I believe he did because he felt it important and something that civic minded people did as a matter of course.

The post office we had in Ridgewood, like it was in many towns, was not a place to be avoided. It produced wonder in many of us as to how they could possibly send so many packages and letters to so many different places in such a reasonable amount of time. If you recall it was 1963 that ZIP codes (Zone Improvement Plan) were introduced and that solved part of the mystery of the postal system's efficiency. Now we look up our Zip codes online and don't have to visit a post office to look through the huge book of zip codes.

In the 1960s ZIP codes were such a great step forward that the fact was advertised on TV.

I would be hard pressed to think of something today which touches all our lives in the same manner. To mention the Internet and all the new Social Networking applications would be a close second to Zip codes because in the old days you depended upon the US Mail. Today there are many people who still do and don't have a thing to do with the Internet. If something comes to mind I'll probably blog about it but I don't hold out much hope for something replacing Mr Zip in terms of importance in everybody's day to day lives.