This guest post comes from AFC staff folklorist, Nancy Groce, who interviewed Emily Hilliard on the heels of her Occupational Folklife Project collection going up on the Library’s website. Emily is the Folklorist at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky, and the author of Making Our Future: Visionary Folklore and Everyday Culture in Appalachia (UNC Press, 2022), which draws from her work as the West Virginia State Folklorist.
The American Folklife Center is delighted to announce that another outstanding oral history collection has just been added to the hundreds of interviews with contemporary American workers already available online as part of the Occupational Folklife Project. This one could not be more timely! It features interviews with 25 contemporary rural mail carriers and clerks (formerly known as postmasters) whose work contributes so much to the holiday season.
In this blog, staff folklorist Nancy Groce talks with folklorist Emily Hilliard, the project’s director, about her fieldwork and experiences researching Rural Free Delivery: Mail Carriers in Central Appalachia, which was made possible by a 2021 Archie Green Fellowship.
NG: First, congratulations on a completing such a terrific occupational folklife collection! Can you tell me a bit about your career?
EH: My current position is Folklorist at Berea College in Berea, Kentucky, but when I applied for the Archie Green Fellowship, I was working as the West Virginia State Folklorist and Founding Director of the West Virginia Folklife Program at the West Virginia Humanities Council. I’ve also worked with several regional and national traditional arts and cultural heritage organizations including Mid Atlantic Arts, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, and the National Council for the Traditional Arts. Prior to grad school at the University of North Carolina, I interned at the American Folklife Center, which was such a positive and foundational experience!
NG: What sparked your interest in rural postal workers?
EH: My initial interest was actually sparked by a 1973 Sesame Street video, “Appalachian Mailman,” which I vaguely recall seeing as a kid (in reruns, as that was before my time) and rediscovered as an adult. The video features a mail carrier—who I later learned to be Irvine Pratt, a blacksmith and one of the last mail carriers to deliver by horseback—and follows him on his rugged and mountainous daily 18-mile route from Pinetop to Holly Bush in Knott County, Kentucky. The video makes it clear that Pratt is an important lifeline for members of this community, who relied on mail delivery of goods and supplies to their mountain homes and perhaps awaited news from their loved ones.
Then, in 2020, USPS Rural Delivery was in the news with debates over privatization and the outsized impact it would have on rural communities. It was reported that rural home delivery would not be profitable for private corporations (which already rely on the USPS for “last mile” delivery in rural places). These articles also referred to rural carriers as “first responders.” It was the height of the pandemic, when the presidential election was relying on vote-by-mail for safety, which intensified concerns over the sustainability of the Postal Service.
I wanted to understand more about the daily work of rural mail carriers and the role they play in their communities, and I wanted to ensure that their value was documented. I was also curious about changes longtime rural carriers might have witnessed in their work, community, and landscape during their careers.
And Sesame Street video aside, Appalachia was the birthplace of rural delivery— which started in West Virginia in 1896—and it is still a crucial service for communities in the region. Almost 55% of the population in Central Appalachia lives in rural, mountainous areas where broadband access is insufficient, so many people rely on USPS mail carriers to pay bills, receive life-dependent prescription medications, and communicate with loved ones, not to mention those “last mile” delivery of shipments from Fed-Ex, UPS, and Amazon.
Moreover, I live and work in the region, so I was intimately familiar with its political and social realities, demographics, and landscape, and knew that in a region currently in a state of economic transition, secure, well-paying union jobs like those the USPS offers are crucial.
NG: How did you make contact with postal workers and decide which ones to interview?
EH: For the Archie Green Fellowship, I was looking for rural carriers in Appalachian regions of Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia, and North Carolina, as well as a diversity of carriers in terms of gender, race, age, and length of their career. I ended up interviewing 20 current or retired rural carriers, 2 rural postmasters/clerks, 1 part-time rural carrier, and 2 “highway contractors”, who deliver on rural routes but are contract workers.
When I was applying for the Fellowship, I reached out to the National Rural Letter Carriers Association, the labor union for rural carriers in the United States, and their national president was kind enough to write me a letter of support. The chapter presidents of several Central Appalachian states gave me some initial contacts and, after I received the AFC support, I attended a meeting of the Kentucky Rural Letter Carriers Association, where I met other carriers and conducted a few interviews. After I started the project, some of the carriers I interviewed, as well as other friends and contacts, put me in touch with additional carriers.
NG: Can you talk a bit about who you interviewed? I understand one of them was Wayne Henderson, who I know as an NEA National Heritage Fellow because of his work as a world-renowned luthier.
EH: It was particularly exciting to interview Wayne. While he is famous as a guitar maker, not everyone knows that Wayne also carried the mail in his home community of Rugby, Virginia (out of the Mouth of Wilson Post Office) for 32 years, beginning in 1969. In his interview, he remembers how, when he was growing up, the local mail carrier held an esteemed position in the community. He talks about how the carrier was a resource who could assist people with writing official letters and navigating other business. He cites this as part of the reason he took the job and kept it for so long while also growing his guitar making business.
Wayne’s route was 87 miles with 200-300 boxes in a very rural area, including high elevations along Mt. Rogers and he recalled how he often had to make his rounds despite snowy weather and high winds. An earlier carrier had done the route on horseback, and Wayne remembers delivering to mailboxes that were at horse height (and prone to hosting spiders’ nests).
When I interviewed Wayne at his shop, I also interviewed a current local mail carrier named Brian Grim, who grew up knowing and being inspired by Wayne and was part of his music community (I found that many rural mail carriers are also musicians). After our interviews, Wayne, Brian, and Merle Haggard’s guitarist Redd Volkaert played some tunes for us in Wayne’s kitchen.
NG: It sounds like one of those wonderful, unexpected fieldwork moments! And the music you recorded is really good, too. (See a video of one of the tunes in the player below–or find more videos, plus the audio of both the music and the interview, at this link!)
Video of Wayne Henderson, Brian Grim and Redd Volkaert playing ‘Arkansas Traveler’ in Henderson’s kitchen
We can’t cover all the interviews in this blog, but what were some things that came up frequently in the interviews?
EG: All of the mail carriers talked in depth about their jobs, their routes, and the systems they had developed to organize letters and packages most efficiently for their routes. Many also voiced appreciation for the beauty of the Appalachian landscape; recalling encounters with wildlife (deer, turtles, foxes, bobcats, bald eagle, bees, rattlesnakes and especially bears); and domesticated animals (as I heard many say, “Any dog will bite!”). They talked about their vehicles, especially right-hand drive cars and trucks, and the challenges of breaking down in bad weather on rural roads.
The carriers told me about the pride they took in their jobs and carriers’ role as care workers in service to their communities. They also talked about how important their customers were to them and how much they appreciated when customers showed their appreciation with small gifts like cookies, candies, fresh pork tenderloin (from a meat farmer), homemade bread, knitted scarves, and cold bottled water on a hot day and hot chocolate on a cold day.
NG: Thanks so much. Again, congratulations! It is a terrific oral history collection.