An Evening With A Rural Mail Carrier

I saw him up ahead in the fading light of an early December evening – an older gentleman was waiting at his mailbox.
Informed by no more than my one year’s experience as a mail carrier, I suspected that he was most likely impatiently waiting for his tardy newspaper. So I braced myself, prepared to apologize for my (and his paper’s) late arrival.
But (to my surprise) he wasn’t waiting for me in order to complain about his late newspaper. Not at all. He merely wanted to ask if I might put his mail on hold over the coming weekend. He was taking a trip to Indianapolis and wanted his mail held.
“Sure. I can do that,” I told him.