July 14, 2005

Postal carrier Eddie Moore has been delivering mail around Yellow Springs and Miami Township for 31 years, the last 26 of which he has spent on the Yellow Springs post office’s rural route. This photo was taken earlier this month on Hyde Road.

By Lauren Heaton

Eddie Moore can tell a lot about people by looking at their mail. Since he’s been delivering their mail for 31 years, his customers on the Yellow Springs rural route know him pretty well too. Tia Huston leaves fresh eggs in the mailbox for him, Deann Ward leaves apple butter at Christmas and Rebecca Fenton leaves notes on outgoing letters asking if more postage is needed. But his favorite is finding a nice, cold rootbeer on a hot summer day as he opens a box to slip in the bundles of letters, bills, magazines, ads and packages destined for the residents on his route.

Moore arrives at the post office at 7 every morning, after stopping at Dino’s Cappuccinos, to sort the mail and load up his car. He doesn’t use a postal truck because of the country miles he puts on, so he plants a light and a magnetic U.S. Postal Service sign on his maroon Mercury Sable and piles in for a six-hour ride through the fields and farms around the village.

The mail is delivered from the right side of the vehicle, and while a mail truck is designed for such things, Moore must put his left foot on the gas from the right side of the bench seat and do a yoga-like stretch to reach the mailboxes. It could be something to complain about, but Moore bumps along with his head brushing the roof of the car talking about how glad he is that he volunteered for the rural route so many years ago.

The people on his route are glad too, several of them said, because Moore goes beyond the call of duty to deliver their mail. Ward and her husband, Neil, receive packages two to three times a week, and Moore always honks as he pulls up and brings the items to the porch. Moore carries a packet of pink delivery notices meant to alert people to pick up their packages at the post office. But he doesn’t use them much because if he can, he likes to deliver the mail himself.

Moore has delivered the mail to Fenton’s Grinnell Circle address since 1975, and she has always known him to be on time and in a good mood. “He’s always happy, he’s almost like Lassie Come Home,” she said. “At 10:30 in the morning, if Eddie’s on the route, my mail is always in the box.”

Moore performs a host of favors for his customers, which he considers to be not a big deal. One resident on his route developed health problems and couldn’t make it to the end of the long driveway to retrieve the mail, so Moore got permission to make the trek to her doorstep every day. And when another customer needed an urgent shipment of medical supplies which didn’t arrive until after Moore had left on his route, he called the postmaster and personally delivered the package that afternoon.

“Hey, that’s no problem,” Moore said repeatedly about the efforts he makes to get out the mail. “That’s how it is on the rural route.”

Gary England, who came to Yellow Springs as the postmaster in February, understood within a few months the care that Moore puts into his job and the relationship he has developed with his customers.

“Eddie is an old school kind of postman,” England said. “He’s the most conscientious person toward his customers of anyone I’ve ever seen. He’ll go past the expectations, and he’s got more people who call and praise him than anyone in here.”

Partly, Moore makes such an effort because he really likes his job. He first started out as a naval postal clerk aboard the U.S. Kittyhawk that trolled through the Philippines and Vietnam in the late ’60s. In 1973 he started as a substitute carrier in Yellow Springs, and at one time had memorized all the village and rural routes. Then in 1979, when Bob Bittner retired as Yellow Springs’ rural carrier, Moore volunteered when no one else wanted the job.

He gets on the road every morning around 9 a.m. with the mail for over 422 mailboxes piled on the seat beside him and in the back of the car. He first heads east on State Route 343, then Bryan Park and Grinnell Roads, going as far north as Jackson Road, as far south as Goes Station and as far west as Snively and part of Dayton-Yellow Springs Road.

The route has its treacheries, such as rain, snow, heat and the fast cars that speed by on rural and state routes. But the ride is also pastoral at times, and with the windows open on a sunny day, Moore finds his job downright pleasant, he said.

“I don’t like working inside, I could have a grouchy day in the post office, but once I get out here, it’s not so bad,” he said. “I’m by myself, I don’t have to answer to anybody, and it’s nice and peaceful normally.”

The other main attraction of his job is the variety of people Moore gets to meet and talk to every day, he said. Packages that need to be certified mean a chance for him to interact with his customers and find out interesting things about them, things that he remembers about each one.

There is the quarter horse family and trainer, the family Moore sometimes hunts with, the UPS lady, the woman who writes for Channel Horse Report, the Yellow Springs basketball coach, the car collector, the woman who just retired, the one who just put up a new porch railing and the family whose children Moore has watched grow into young adults. There are also those who count on receiving their Social Security checks every month, and Moore is extra careful on those days not to miss or mistake a box.

Each of these details provides a connection for Moore and a reason to invest in his job and perform his best for those who depend on him.

His routine was only slightly interrupted recently by the passing of his 59th birthday on June 27, which did not go unnoticed by his customers. Many of them put cards in their boxes, letting him know how much they appreciate his work.

He works 11 out of 12 days, stopping at home for lunch, where he sometimes sees his wife, Carol, who works at US Bank in Yellow Springs. When he isn’t taking care of his customers on the route, Moore is taking care of his mother-in-law, Rachel Hannah, who lives in the area, and watering his wife’s garden.

Moore is the oldest carrier with the most seniority in the Yellow Springs branch at the moment, and though he could have retired already, he hopes to stay perhaps another three years. Because of housing growth to the northwest of the village, he now shares a part of his route with Carla Markley.

As long as he is healthy and able, Moore will look forward to his life on the rural route, where for him, every day is a new opportunity to serve a need or meet someone new.