Going Postal for Aunty Sam

By Margaret Krivicic

About the Book
This book has been 50 years in the making. Today’s social climate, the passage of time, and the privatization of the US Postal Service have finally made it possible for Margaret Krivicic to share her memoir with the world. What was it like for a pioneering woman working as a letter carrier in the man’s world of a Brooklyn, NY Post office in 1969? What was it like being a carrier during the famous Postal Strike of 1970? What nefarious activities were afoot at the station? This is her true story of what happened during her 7 years at the Cypress Station [Federal] Post Office.
While other women were prevented from entering the station, Krivicic was discriminated against, harassed, held at gunpoint, threatened with rape, groped, and assaulted, all while wearing the uniform of the United States Postal Service. How could one woman endure it alone? Discover the circumstances that drove her to compulsively ruminate about a vengeful attack against the postal perpetrators and what kept her from following through on her plans in this unique and inspiring memoir.

About the Author
A vivacious and good-natured woman of 80 years, Margaret Krivicic is an Ohio State graduate who consistently tries new things and delights in meeting new people. She is an excellent cook, an avid reader, and has taken up painting family portraits as a hobby at age 78. Krivicic and her husband of over 50 years enjoy traveling and the great outdoors. They have a daughter and a son.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Company
• Release date: Aug 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9798888127353

Book preview

Prologue

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The Class Picnic at the Schoolhouse

1949

There were two kinds of women at the schoolhouse picnic in 1949. The first kind, the majority of them, were farmers’ wives who brought their husbands. The second kind was a minority of one: Peggy, whose husband was working as an engineer, was considered a city slicker. The countrywomen wore loose, dark dresses; black shawls; black, knee-high socks; and black shoes. Peggy wore a form-fitting skirt, a pastel blouse, nylons, and low-heeled white shoes. The countrywomen had their hair parted in the middle and pulled back in a bun; Peggy wore her hair long, curly, highlighted, and blowing in the breeze. The countrywomen had scrubbed faces and a scowl; Peggy was lightly made-up and had a smile. The farmwomen were a closed, exclusive group who weren’t open to outsiders. Peggy was extroverted, vivacious, and sophisticated.

Peggy tried talking to one woman, but she walked away like Peggy wasn’t there. Then she approached a small group of women and tried to introduce herself. They expanded their shawls by stretching out their arms to close off their conversation. Peggy tried to circumvent the shawls, but more shawl-clad women joined the group, blocking her way. The young women as well as the grandmothers were all apt at using their shawls, and that is why they brought them along on this warm, summer day. They were more than rude; they were outright hostile.

I was glad my mother wisely chose not to come. She already had a taste of their hospitality when she was invited to one of their coffee get-togethers. Although she wasn’t treated that badly, she saw enough to figure them out.

The treatment of Peggy was criminal, but she was not going to give up. She decided to talk to Mrs. Stone, the schoolteacher. The teacher brushed her off and went to join the biddies, who were using their shawls to signal to her. They lifted their shawls off their shoulders in unison and pulled them up on their necks with their arms extended.

The men were dressed in flannel shirts and overalls. They gathered in the nearby field beyond the gate to play baseball, but hadn’t really gotten into the game. They were rather preoccupied with what was going on with their wives on the other side of the gate. I could see them struggling to pretend they had a real game. One would throw the ball to the other, but the catcher wasn’t paying attention and missed the ball.

It was then that Peggy decided to get even, shake things up, and have a little fun. She approached the male country bumpkins with a seductive smile and asked, Do you mind if I join the game and play a little baseball?

 The men were clearly shocked and tongue-tied. They hadn’t expected to be approached by this woman and weren’t as skilled as the women at shunning. That was women’s work.

 I’m quite good at the game, said Peggy, clearly enjoying their embarrassment. Please, give me the bat.

 Peggy took the bat, walked out a ways, and turned. She swung her hips and arms in the most exaggerated warm-up I ever saw.

 The men, who were lined up on the other side, all broke out into a smile in unison. Their grins revealed the biggest dental fiasco I had ever seen. There were missing teeth, and the ones left over were rotten enough for a field of pumpkins on Halloween.

 Now the game got serious, at least for a while. Eventually, they became aware of the antics of their wives.

 The biddies were acting like chickens in a barnyard. The variety that came to mind was Fighting Barred Rock chickens. They looked around with their arms extended in the shawls and their noses poking out like beaks. They spun around with blazing eyes and ran at each other, spitting comments. They used their shawls like wings to cover their consternation and rage. Under the cover of a cloak, they let their emotions run wild with extravagance.

 The shawls hid nothing but brought to mind ostriches hiding their heads in the sand. I stood at a distance, transfixed by the ranting. Although I couldn’t hear their words, I decoded every nuance of what they were saying.

 Suddenly, one became aware of me. Mrs. Stone turned around with hate in her eyes and screamed, Go play with the other children, Margaret!

 When I got home, I reported everything to my mother.

 She expressed her sorrow at what had happened to Peggy and told me, but said more to herself, Those are the hens that rule the roost in this community, and don’t you ever forget it.

They were a xenophobic group who lived in Upstate New York for over 250 years. They wanted to keep the place for themselves, planning to buy up the land real cheap (my father’s expression) when the price went down. While they were waiting, thanks to the mass arrival of the automobile, some outsiders and city slickers, like my father, bought into the community.

One of our neighbors, Alex, who had been the first to arrive in the community, got a warm reception when they burned a cross on his front lawn. They arrived in overalls and flannel shirts with bandanas over their faces. Alex sat on the porch with a shotgun over his lap, protecting his pregnant wife and six-month-old child. Alex, a white outsider, had searched the house and vowed he would never run out of ammunition again.

 In the schoolhouse, my sister, brother, and I were called the City Suckers. The town held a secret town meeting to discuss the disease-ridden City Suckers who had invaded their community. They called in the local country doctor, Doc Snub, to vaccinate the diseased children who were a threat to their community. Doc Snub arrived at the end of the school day, and we were the first to be vaccinated and sent home. This was done so that the other children, who laughed at our discomfort, could witness and tell their parents that the job was being done.

 Of course, we told our mother. Mom dug out our medical records and walked the mile down to the schoolhouse to show the teacher that we had already been vaccinated. It turns out that the community wasn’t vaccinated for one reason or another, but they had taken it upon themselves to vaccinate outsiders.

 These events afforded me a good look at the prejudiced mob and their brats when I was six years old. Their actions defined them as mean-spirited and ignorant, like the chickens. Living in a bubble of their own making, they mixed religion with hate and revealed their selfish motives to everyone else. With character as frail as a house of cards, they had no substance at all. They damned themselves by not following God’s commandment to love their neighbor.

In everyone’s life, there are certain moments and narratives that shape the trajectory of things to come. My childhood experiences of ostracism within a community played a key role in my journey; they would affect me for better or for worse for the rest of my life.

Chapter 1

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Getting Started in the Brooklyn Post Office

1969

Alex, a good friend of my father, was an avid storyteller. We used to gather at the kitchen table to eagerly listen to his tales. He began the wild stories of his youth in the following way: If you have one boy, you have one brain. If you have two boys, you have half a brain between them. The more boys you put together, the less brains you have [in the group].

 I think it is appropriate to begin my story by borrowing Alex’s opening statement. It all began in predominately male station of the Brooklyn Post Office.

I was used to working in an office with almost all women, so entering into the back of an all-male post office was a big shock to me. It was like going into the men’s room at a busy airport. I felt the same kind of embarrassment and sense of not belonging.

 As a result of Title 7 of the Civil Rights Act legislation of 1964, and the talk of equal rights for women (i.e. the ERA), jobs opened up in the federal government for women. The year was 1969. I was going to school at night and getting nowhere as a clerk for Standard & Rich. My father encouraged me to take the civil service exam for the post office. When I received the notice that I had passed the exam, I expected to get a job as a clerk. Instead, I was accepted as a letter carrier. At last, I thought, women are accepted as equals! Boy, was I in for a rude awakening! I saw what an empty promise equal rights turned out to be. It is long past due for the Equal Rights Amendment of the Constitution to pass in the USA.

This story is my true account of what happened to me working in a predominantly male post office. It has taken me decades to recover from the physical and mental abuses I endured in that job. In addition to being physically assaulted and held at gunpoint, I was molested and threatened with rape while wearing the postal service uniform. Fellow workers, supervisors, and some of the general public committed these abuses because they couldn’t accept the fact that a woman should be allowed to do a man’s job.

 Cypress Station was an old building. Someone said it used to be an old horse stable or a garage. There was a door to the postal store on the left, a few high windows in between, and the huge garage on the right. Ventilation was poor in the building because the only other windows were high up on the back of the building. They were hard to open. The building stunk. There were rows of racking cases where the carriers sorted the mail to set it up for delivery. Each carrier had one and a half cases—one with the scheme (schemes were systems of slots used to separate the mail by street and number) of delivery for the letters, and one additional half for magazines and packages. There were 52 routes in the station.

 Along the length of the back wall were the cases that [letter] carriers used to sort the mail. Access to the cases was via a narrow path across the building, the other side of which was a wall of the backs of the cases of the next alley. Against this wall of cases, was a row of mail carts (the kind that carriers took out on the street to deliver mail). There were two other parallel alleys where the cases faced each other, on either side of a wide path, stretching the width of the building. A perpendicular path ran down the middle, cutting the alleys in half. A wide space ran down the right side of the building, cluttered with hand trucks (dollies). Mail sacks were everywhere. I was later to learn that the largest of the sacks were full of circulars and supermarket adds. It looked like a firetrap.

 In the front of the station, were the see-through racks of schemes where the clerks sorted for each route. I was glad to see a black woman clerk. She introduced herself as Dorothy. She was glad to see me, too.

 Hand trucks and sacks of mail dominated the landscape. When the big trucks backed into the garage, you could smell the exhaust fumes, especially if the doors were open. It was a depressing place where I felt claustrophobia would rule the day.

 Clearly, I was a bit of a novelty. Some of the men seemed friendly and humorously introduced themselves and a few of their friends. Some ignored me, and others seemed resentful. One character, introduced as the Gabe, was huge, tall, and overweight with a big smile on his face. He had his hand so far in his deep pockets that he seemed to be playing with himself. He scared the hell out of me. I didn’t know how to react to such a scene, and it almost put me into a panic. I felt like I wanted to run out of the place screaming, Police!

 It was a great relief when I saw another female carrier. Joan was a tall, thin woman with long blond hair in her early twenties. She seemed friendly, and I started to relax a little. What a great encouragement it was for me to know that there was another woman letter carrier in the station.

I was assigned to Bob, who was going to break me in. It was said in a sleazy fashion and meant to draw laughs and comments from the boys. I had one day to learn everything about delivering the mail, and then I’d be on my own. Bob seemed to be a decent sort of person and easy to talk to. He did all the work while I just accompanied him and observed his method of delivery. He gave me all kinds of advice. He told me that if I finished up early, I should not go back to the post office before 2:15 PM. He was the one who set the mail according to the scheme, racked the mail, and did most of the delivering. I simply followed him around. Finally, he gave me a couple of bundles of mail and told me to deliver them. He said that I could meet up with him in the coffee shop.

 The next day, I was on my own. Because I was a sub, I was given pieces of different routes. Although the mail had already been racked (organized) for me, it was very confusing because I wasn’t familiar with each neighborhood. I had to find where to begin the delivery, and then follow the mail. Luckily, I had a map from the gas station that listed all the streets, and I had my own car. There were relay boxes where I could pick up more mail after I finished the mail I carried out.

 In the next stage, I was given the whole route and had to rack my own mail. This is where it got really difficult. I am short and had to stretch to reach the top rack. For half of the block, the even numbers would go up, and on the return loop, the odd numbers would go down. Sometimes, the carrier would go up a street, cross back down the middle of the road to the opposite corner (catty corner), and start up again at the beginning of the street in a zig-zag pattern. Trying to rack this was thoroughly confusing because I wasn’t familiar with what was going on, and I had a new route every day. On some routes, there would be similar streets like 59th Street, 59th Avenue, and 59th Road. At the beginning, I was mis-racking the mail like crazy.

 When you got out on the route, you had to be careful not to deliver to the wrong address. I was bringing back a lot of mail for re-racking, and I was retracing my steps. To add to this, I was getting out late because it took me longer than the regular [carrier] to rack the mail. People were not only surprised to see a woman carrier, but were also surely vexed at the late delivery and the mis-delivered mail. I did a lot of walking back and forth.

I wore the uniform hat, which was some kind of pillbox type. The hat turned out to be a big mistake though, because it was the same one that the meter maid wore. Some people were downright hostile to me. One time, I went into a store to deliver mail and a certified letter. The man at the counter refused to talk to me and told me to get out of his store.

 In that case, you can pick up your mail at the post office, I said.

When he realized that I was delivering the mail, he said "Oh, I’ll take that! I thought you were the meter maid!"

Another person came running up with a quarter and said, I was just going to feed the meter!

There is no meter. There is a no parking sign. It’s a good thing I’m not the meter maid, I answered.

After that, I put away the hat and never wore it again.

 One of the most annoying things was how many people came up to me and asked for their mail out on the street. Sometimes, I would not be anywhere the near the front of their building, and I would have to tell them repeatedly, I don’t know you. You could be someone robbing the mail. I’m told not to give the mail out on the street. Please wait until I get to your mailbox. Instead of being understanding, they would get annoyed. Sometimes, it was as if they had to interact with the novelty of a female carrier, and when I refused their request, they took it as a slight.

 Other times, it was rewarding, like when some young girl would tell me that she wanted to be a letter carrier also. They hadn’t realized that it could be a woman’s job. Some people would even curse me for taking the job away from some passed-over man for less pay. Boy, were they shocked and just as mad when they learned that I was making the same money as the male carriers.

I remember passing by two old guys playing chess by the park. They sang out loudly:

"Oh! …Me mother was a truck driver. Me father was the maid, Me brother was a cross dresser. Me sister was a knave…"

They made it up as they sang along and then they laughed like crazy.

On another occasion, I walked into an office where two young guys were about to embarrass themselves. One guy in a raincoat flashed the other. They were laughing and carrying on as I announced my presence.

Mail!

When they realized I was a woman, they almost dropped dead. I left that scene in a hurry.

I did make a few really stupid mistakes, too, like the time I brought back a package because I wanted to protect the mail. Abe, the manager of the station, who rarely came out of his office, came out if there was a complaint. That package turned out to be a United Parcel delivery, and they had to take it back out in the special delivery vehicle.

 Apparently, people were calling the post office to complain. I was back at the station talking to Ray, the one black carrier in the station, who was in the habit of answering the phones.

He said, They call up to complain about the deliveries. They don’t want certain carriers delivering their mail. They don’t want that ‘bitch woman’ delivering their mail. When I heard that, it was like a hot a cup of tea in the face.

They say things like that?! I asked.

Get over it! he said. They don’t want any Negroes, and they don’t want any Spicks either.

 Does it have any effect on management? I asked.

He just shrugged his shoulders.

They are afraid that some black carrier will see a ‘For Rent’ sign in their window, he said. The women are a bad example to their precious, protected children. A woman letter carrier is a threat to housewives because other women are out working. You might steal their husbands. Who knows?

Gradually, I started to improve, but it was very