Rural Mail Carrier Memories
In 1932, Fred E. Boone wrote to The Eureka Herald some of his memories as a rural mail carrier in Greenwood County: “I started carrying mail in September of 1906 as a substitute for a rural carrier out of Neal, Kansas, who was on leave due to sickness and was not able to come back and resigned about November of 1906. I continued to carry as a substitute until the examination was called in March, 1907.
“With 15 or 18 other men from Greenwood County, I took the exam at the high school in Eureka. On June 8, 1907 I was appointed as a rural carrier out of Neal, and continued that route until November, 1918, when I asked and got a transfer from Neal to a route in Eureka.
“How well do I remember that examination day here in Eureka, as the night before the exam there came to our house a baby girl. When I started, I drove horses. I kept three head of horses. The salary was $50 a month, and in those days, I paid $1.50 per ton for hay, from 30 cents to 50 cents for corn and traded horses every time I got a chance and lots of time, I would miss a meal to make a horse trade.
“Those were the good tough days for rural carriers. I got up at 5:00 a.m. and reported at the post office by 7:00 a.m. and it would take all day and far into the night as those Kansas unimproved roads were fierce. I have, on different trips, had to stop and take a spade and clean out the mud so the wheels on my vehicle would revolve. I had driven three horses to a three-quarters buggy, so as to get along. I have ridden horseback for nine straight weeks and I think I have tried every kind of conveyance except a wheelbarrow.
“The horse and buggy transportation way I used until the spring of 1914 when I bought my first used Ford touring car from Mr. George Jackson, and since then I have tried them all and I still think the horse and buggy days were the dandy days.
“During the twenty-five years and seven months of my carrying, I can truthfully say that with exception of the two and one-half months of my confinement owing to the operation, I went through on February 22, 1925, for my leg amputation, I have not lost thirty days from sickness or other causes.
“Now, I figure in the 25 ¾ years of my carrying the mail for the post office department I have driven something like 128,232 miles and sometimes it seems like most of them were good long miles, where the wind, snow, sleet and rain were blowing from the frozen north at a rate of sixty miles per hour and the temperature registering from 5 degrees above to 20 below. Fred E. Boone-R.L.C. (Reserve Letter Carrier) No. 4-Eureka, Ks.”
