ROLFE — Rick Johnson has seen a lot in his nearly 20 years as a rural mail carrier, but the deluges that have pounded his area in recent weeks will go down in local history and lore.
“The flooding I’m seeing around here is worse than in 1993,’’ said Johnson, 52, whose 145-mile mail route based in Rolfe, passes through Palo Alto, Humboldt and Pocahontas counties. ‘‘Just when things started to dry out, big rains filled everything back up again.’’
When he headed from Rolfe to Bradgate on the morning of June 13, Johnson couldn’t return west on Highway C26 just a few hours later, because the Des Moines River spilled over the road. Closed roads have also been a problem farther east, where all three carriers out of the Humboldt post office are facing numerous detours on their mail routes.
‘‘The creeks are full and the ditches are full, but so far there hasn’t been any location I haven’t been able to deliver to,’’ said Dave Holst, 49, a rural mail carrier based at the Humboldt post office who drives a 91-mile route covering Bode, Dakota City, Badger and Thor. One household along the route tried to find a little humor in the spring floods, he noted. ‘‘For awhile they had a john boat out and put up a ‘boat rides’ sign,’’ Holst said.
The view from the mail route
Some of the worst flooding in Johnson’s area has occurred in Humboldt County.
‘‘This year I’ve also seen more wildlife around, including turtles, geese and deer. I’m sure the flooding is affecting them, too.’’
The plight of Iowa’s crops is evident when you drive through the country, added Johnson, who farmed for 10 years and became a substitute rural mail carrier in 1989 before going full time in 1999.
“Most of the farmers around here got their crops in before the worst of the rains fell, but they had to hustle. Now the weeds are coming up, and the farmers can’t get in to spray. It’s also getting late enough in the season that replanting may not be possible in some of the areas that have been drowned out.’’
These are key concerns for Holst, who lives near Clare and farms 720 acres with his father, Richard.
‘‘The ponding in the fields,” Holst said, “looks like it did in 1993, and there are some seed corn fields and bean fields around here that never got planted. I won’t replant my corn that has been drowned out.”
Racking up the miles
While flooding has led to many road closures in north central Iowa and elsewhere, Humboldt County’s limestone rural roads have stayed in pretty good condition this year, Holst said. ‘‘I don’t go too many days without seeing a maintainer working on the roads along my route.’’
Those limestone roads are hard on tires, however. On average, Holst gets new tires every 10,000 miles. ‘‘I don’t put the hubcaps on, because they just get in the way of changing the tires,’’ he added.
Tires and brakes are the biggest expenses for Holst’s 1994 Buick LeSabre, which racks up about 30,000 miles per year as Holst delivers the mail Monday through Friday to nearly 380 families. His last mail car, a 1995 Buick LeSabre, logged 260,000 miles before it wore out.
As Johnson crisscrosses the country, he puts about 35,000 miles a year on his 2000 Jeep Cherokee, a right-hand drive vehicle made especially for rural mail carriers. The distance between stops on Johnson’s route continues to lengthen as the years go by, since a few more farmsteads are bulldozed down and turned into cropland each year.
“When I started full-time in 1999, I served about 190 to 200 households,’’ added Johnson, who is a member of the Iowa Rural Letter Carriers Association. ‘‘Now it’s down to about 170. About the only real expansion on my route has been swine buildings and hogs don’t get much mail.’’
While customers may not see Johnson arrive until afternoon, his day starts around 7 a.m., when he arrives at the post office to sort the mail, which takes about 60 to 90 minutes. Afterward, he heads out into the country, where 120 miles of his 145-mile route are on gravel roads. The cost of covering the route has soared in the past few years, especially now that gas prices are pushing $4 per gallon. ‘‘It’s almost hard to believe that when I graduated from Rolfe High School in 1974, gas was 25 cents a gallon,’’ said Johnson, who receives about 57 cents per mile from the postal service.
Wild situations
While the changing economic climate and severe weather impact rural mail carriers, so do strange happenings in the country. Rural mail carriers have seen it all, from pigeons, cats and dead fish in the mailbox, to runaway livestock. One time when a local resident’s cattle got out, Holst tracked down the owner and let him know, although the owner didn’t seem too worried about the situation.
“About a week later when another one of his animals got out,” Holst added, “I didn’t mention it because I didn’t want to bother him. This time he got mad, however, because the one that got out was his prized animal.’’
Sometimes mayhem in rural Iowa takes other forms. One day, while on his route, he spotted a John Deere tractor driving aimlessly in big circles in a field.
“I thought maybe someone was hurt,” Holst said, “but it turned out that vandals had started up the tractor and abandoned it.’’
Despite these oddities, few situations along the rural mail route can match the widespread havoc that Mother Nature can unleash. In this time of extreme weather, it’s hard to say what the fall and winter might bring, Johnson said.
“It has been a crazy year so far,” he said, “and we’ll remember the spring of 2008 for a long time.’’
Contact Darcy Dougherty Maulsby at yettergirl@yahoo.com
