05070 - South Strafford, Vt.
Vince Robinson, a sixth-generation South Strafford native, has been the face in the post office window at Coburn’s General Store since February 24, 1990. The following is an edited interview.
I’ve got a torn rotator cuff in my shoulder from thirty years of pigeon-holing mail. Therapy would probably be the thing to do, but I hate taking the time off to go to therapy.
It’s really a privilege to be a postmaster because believe it or not, the postal service is the most trusted branch of the US government. It’s a system that touches every home in the country. But I don’t want to give you a lot of bull. I do it for the paycheck. Coming from the military, I decided a government career was the way to go.
I’ve been in the postal system for 29 years. I got out of the Army in ’75 and worked at CRREL in Hanover for a while. Another gentleman there said he was transferring over to the post office in White River, so I went and took the test, too.
I had to qualify on what was called the LSM, which is the letter sorting machine. I had to be able to sort one letter a second, keying-in three digits, tick, tick, tick. Three out of four people couldn’t do it. I didn’t have a terrific score, but as an Army vet I got extra points, so that was part of what got me in there.
Mail is a private thing. I have a window into people’s lives, seeing what they get. There are some things I know about people that I wish I didn’t. A lot of people expect me to know what’s going on in the community, but I don’t always hear everything. And I try not to spread rumors. There’s a code of confidentiality, and it’s part of the job preserving that trust.
I don’t know if I could say that I enjoy coming to work every day, but I still enjoy sorting the mail. Working the window isn’t quite as much fun. When people are looking for something in the mail and it doesn’t make it, they tend to blame the post office and I’m the face of it.
I start at 6:30 in the morning when the mail comes in and go until 5:30, with an hour-and-a-half lunch break. During the winter I go home for lunch, do the wood furnace, then I take a nap.
I look forward to that nap every day.
Listen to Vince Robinson talk about working as a postmaster in South Strafford.