John Rossi: Christmas cards came by trolley in 1950s Philadelphia
During my junior and senior years in high school I had a part time job delivering mail at Christmas. Back in the early ‘50s, everyone sent Christmas cards and the Post Office was forced to hire substitute mailmen. The pay was good, something like 80 cents an hour, and you could work as long as you wanted with the day starting around 6:30. (There were no mailwomen in those sexist days.)
Right after Thanksgiving, I asked my local mailman —Herman, a large, black World War II vet — if he would recommend me to his supervisor who was in charge of the Olney post office located at 4th and Olney Avenue. I was hired right away and once my school semester ended, I started working.
In those days because of the heavy volume of Christmas mail there were many deliveries each day including Sunday. It was the only way to get the mail delivered before Christmas.
The first thing I tried to do was to get a route near my neighborhood. But the supervisor was too smart to fall for that. He knew that if you worked in your neighborhood, you could kill time and add to your work hours by going to your house to rest and warm up.
Warm up wasn’t a joke. The winter of 1954 was a cold one, no snow but temperatures in the twenties. Naturally, I didn’t have a good winter coat. My usual winter outfit was: tee shirt, long sleeve shirt, sweater and a World War II Eisenhower jacket for which I was well known. My high school yearbook notes under my picture: “looks naked without his Ike jacket.” By the way, my jacket was unlined. Also, I didn’t have work boots and did my deliveries in loafers. I also didn’t wear a hat because I didn’t have one. In fact, young men didn’t wear hats in the ‘50s, at least in Philadelphia.
The job wasn’t that hard, although you started with a loaded leather bag. I took the 47 trolleys — postmen had a badge that let you ride free — to Godfrey Avenue where my route began and started delivering on the streets along the east side of 5th Street. Four blocks of row houses with a flight of about six steps to go up for each house. The cold didn’t get me because I was young and kept moving. The mail was sorted well by the regular mailman who knew the route. Occasionally you had to back track but that was rare. Every few streets there was a mail box, dark green in those days, where a truck periodically dropped off a new batch of mail to be delivered. Then you started your route again. My route usually took about an hour to an hour-and-a-half to finish. I usually ate my lunch at the Fern Rock diner which was no great treat but at least I got warmed up.
I started on a Saturday and averaged about five or six bags a day, usually working from shortly before 7 to around 5. When I returned to the post office, I was usually asked to take out another bag but it was dark and I was tired.
Things went well until Tuesday. I got used to the routine and actually met a couple of people on my route who liked to chat, including a couple of girls who I knew from St. Helena’s dance on Saturday nights. Things like that broke the monotony. Tuesday, I picked up my well-loaded bag at the post office but was told to check the drop-off box for some extras. The extras were about 60 to 70 copies of Time magazine.
Time was at the height of its popularity then and I was shocked how many houses had it delivered. (I shouldn’t have been surprised, as we took it at our house). In the ‘50s, Time was a thick publication — usually around 96 pages. Suddenly, my job got harder. Every drop-off box I opened had more Time magazines. It seemed that everyone in north Olney subscribed to Time. Unlike my first three days that Tuesday I arrived home really beat.
Wednesday and Thursday were routine, just a little colder. Then on Friday, I got my second shock, one worse than Tuesday’s Time nightmare. Friday was Life magazine delivery day. Life is long forgotten and probably unknown by most people today but in the 1950s it was, along with Time, a huge seller and a large, probably 12-by 20-inch, magazine. It also was twice as heavy as Time. Fortunately, it reached about half the households that Time did. But my mail bag felt like I was carrying around a 20-pound dumbbell. Friday wore me out.
I learned to pace myself and occasionally I would divert to help a friend of mine who was selling Christmas trees. You weren’t supposed to do it but if I finished my route early, I would kill some time with him. I even sold a couple of trees for him. After all, you should be able to trust a mailman for an honest deal.
That first winter I met some nice people — a couple even gave me a Christmas tip which didn’t make the regular mailman too happy. I guess he wondered if I got his tip, which I doubt. Those few who tipped me probably felt sorry for the poorly dressed young mailman.
I enjoyed the experience and earned $104 for about three-and-a-half to four weeks’ work. That doesn’t sound like much today but it is equal to about $1200 in today’s dollars. My tuition at La Salle College High School was $240 a year, so part of my Christmas pay went to that.
John P. Rossi is a retired Professor of History from La Salle University.
