Christmas in Venice — the letter-carrier cometh

I don’t know whether they calculate according to volume or weight. Either way, to borrow a phrase, they’re gonna need a bigger boat.  I mean cart.

Of course you have thousands of things to do in preparing for the upcoming holidays, and they will be tiring and inconvenient (I’m guessing).  But your day is going to have trouble squeezing more than average sympathy from me because I this morning I got a glimpse of the letter-carrier’s day.

Do the words “weighty, awkward, cumbersome” added to ” a couple of awful bridges” bring Christmas cheer to your spirit?  Not mine.  This vehicle wonderfully shows the determination of the Italian postal system and its foot soldiers to get the serum to Nome.  Sorry, I mean the mail — or your Amazon orders — to you.  It reminds me of those fabulous motorbikes, the ones that buzz around Naples loaded with entire families, their sports gear (surfboards, lacrosse racquets, five-person tents), domestic animals, the Supreme Court, the 66th Armor Regiment, and so forth, as if it were nothing.

I used to admire the trash collectors, and I still do.  But the letter-carriers have taken the game up to the Expert level.

One might categorize this construction as either a work of art or engineering.  There could be anything here.  Ernest Hemingway’s lost suitcase of short stories, or the solution to the Zodiac Code, or the Seven Cities of Cibola.  Who would know?  The letter-carrier was at the far end of the calle slipping an envelope into a letterbox.  All I can say is that he must have a brain that goes into extra dimensions, because his route must be designed to a diabolical degree.  Imagine arriving at an address and discovering that the item you need is on the very bottom underneath everything.
It occurs to me that his trolley has evolved in somewhat the same way of the average newsstand here.  There are certainly some newspapers wedged into this pandemonium of paper, but as you see, the owner’s survival clearly no longer depends on the sale of newspapers.

 

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4 Comments

  1. Happy Holidays…..all of them. Perhaps there was something jolly for you in that Postman cart. It’s a work of art and may be in the next biennial…..stay tuned.

    I always appreciate your missives…..and wish I could be there, once again, also sending messages from abroad. jean

  2. …not to mention pushing their carts through the tourist crowds… how they do it without losing their tempers, I don’t know. Here on Sant’Erasmo, it all arrives by boat and then either our dear Babbo Natale zooms around in his little car, or the Postie himself on his zoomie moto… Buone Feste!

  3. This reveals institutional organization and individual dedication that is a far cry from the Italian mail scandal c. 1973, when it was discovered the postal system was so far behind that it had been taking truckloads of undelivered mail to paper-pulping plants. Or so the the publicity and rumor mill said. Your carrier deserves extra snaps and perhaps a gift bottle to thank him for his persistence!

  4. It seems in a Heath Robinson way so much more effective than our own posties, even with trolleys, bags and vans. (Sighs) Memories….
    Ella B

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