Angus Smith joined the U.S. Postal Service in 1968 as a clerk, left, and returned as a letter carrier in 1988. He has spent much of the last half century on his feet with a mailbag or in a postal van, delivering mail to Bolton Hill and vicinity.
“I’m ready to go right now,” he said as he chatted outside his mail truck parked on West Lafayette Avenue at Mason Street on a hot August day. Vascular neuropathy and knee issues, despite replacement surgery, have made getting up and down steps and hauling letters and packages more of a chore. Smith is 79 and plans to retire “in the next couple months.”
Interviewed eight years ago by Bolton Hill’s Peter Van Buren in 2018, Smith said he was ready even then to hang it up. “That was my plan, but they made me a special offer, mostly picking up mail” from the blue mailboxes and making package deliveries on wheels instead of walking several miles every day.
The Smith family has a long and deep attachment to mail delivery. “My father worked for 40 years at the old Post Office building at Fayette and Calvert streets. He also was pastor of Memorial Baptist Church in East Baltimore.” Angus Smith grew up in the Oliver neighborhood and attended City College public high school.
Two of his six sisters worked for the Post Office; one retired and the other moved into the public school system. Four brothers did mail work as well, although one went on to law school and became a circuit court judge. A son is currently working at a post office in Halethorpe. Smith’s wife of 59 years was briefly with the postal service as well.
A government agency since 1775 and with free home delivery since 1865, the Postal Service is one agency of the federal government that reaches most Americans five or six days a week. For the Smiths it has meant “steady jobs, good benefits, stability and decent pay,” said Angus Smith, “although it’s a difficult job and not too many young people go for it. Lots of walking. I’ve always felt it was an important service.”
Turnover is higher now than in earlier years, he said. Antonette Johnson currently does most door-to-door deliveries in Bolton Hill.
–Bill Hamilton
