Sorting through life's puzzles on an autumn day

With the arrival of fall comes that interlude between summer's hectic schedule and winter's desire to hibernate, which makes autumn the perfect time to sit in a La-Z-Boy and think about some of the Really Big Questions.

Yes, I know we have big problems to solve all over the world. The plain fact is I cannot contribute much to these Really Big Questions. Neither can you. So let's whittle some thoughts down to our size, shall we?

Take, for instance, what's happening to the United States Postal Service.

Here again, neither you nor I can save our national mail service. We can remember the good old days, and we can fuss about the USPS, but we can't fix it.

Many of you share my memories of rural delivery back in the day. That was when the mailman (they were, indeed, all men at the time) drove up to your mailbox six days a week at about the same time each day. This was important, because the mailbox was a mile away from the house, and going to get the mail meant going when the mailman was due or had already been there. You couldn't just sit there all day and wait for Mailman Gene (who, as it turned out, was also the preacher at Oak Grove Church on Sunday mornings).

Important things came in the mail. Letters. Remember letters? What a joy they were, to be savored by everyone, to be lingered over, to be replied to in a timely manner.

And mail orders from Sears or Montgomery Ward. Remember when you were growing up and your mother sent in a mail order for new school clothes and had to guess how much you would grow in the time it took the order to be delivered and processed and the packages delivered to the mailbox by Gene? You had to be there, of course, or you would have to drive to the post office in town to pick up the packages.

Nowadays the mail comes willy-nilly, sometimes early, sometimes late, sometimes not at all.

The other day I was working in the yard and saw the mail truck stop at our neighbor's mailbox across the street. It was midmorning, and I was heartened to see the mail arrive so early.

But when I went to my mailbox, the flag was still up and my wife's letter to her niece was still in the mailbox. Why hadn't the mailman stopped to get that mail?

As it turns out, the mailman wasn't delivering mail to my neighbor. He was delivering a UPS package. UPS -- and other delivery services, I suppose -- now get many of their packages delivered by the postal service.

Isn't that a puzzle? Why didn't the shipper just mail the package to begin with?

The USPS is going broke because it can't compete with UPS and FedEx and all those outfits, so it delivers for the competition -- at a cut rate, apparently.

Think about that on these cool fall days.

Another mystery involves a patch of green grass about a foot square growing in the middle of the intersection at William Street and West End Boulevard. Maybe you've seen it, too, and wondered, Why is that grass doing so well in the middle of the street?

I've just had a landscaper in my yard this week trying to restore some semblance of a lawn after my front yard was dug up for a sewer replacement back in January. My yard work included the laying of some sod. I wanted to tell the landscaper to go dig up that patch on William Street. Surely it would thrive and spread in my well-fertilized yard. Right?

If plant scientists could harness whatever it is that makes that little patch of grass do so well -- or, for that matter, whatever it is that makes Johnson grass or kudzu thrive in the worst of conditions -- we could wipe out world hunger.

Oops. There's one of those Really Big Questions. Let's just focus on that last letter that arrived by mail. Do you remember it? Do you still have it? Do you expect you will ever get another one?

Joe Sullivan is the retired editor of the Southeast Missourian.