Tom Hanks was the model employee for a certain parcel delivery company. That man was stranded on a desert island, befriended a volleyball, pulled a tooth without pain medicine, somehow found his way off the island and still managed to deliver a package that had survived the plane crash. I’m beginning to think the drivers that deliver packages in rural America could be easily replaced by Wilson the volleyball. You see, out here in rural America, two-day shipping is a myth. It takes at least two days for the delivery company to figure out where in the world our zip code is. Then for some odd reason our package will go from somewhere in California to a distribution center somewhere on the east coast. It then gets re routed to a warehouse outside of Phoenix, gets lost on a truck bound for Denver, gets found three weeks later when an intern was sweeping out a trailer in Detroit, finally makes it to Omaha where it apparently comes to the western half of the state via people reenacting settlers traveling by covered wagon along the Oregon Trail.
There are a few drivers that deliver packages out here that are our favorites. You can set your watch by them, and they are always courteous and professional. Then there are the ones who never quite got over their childhood dreams of driving for Nascar. When they do manage to make it down the dirt roads, you can see them coming from a mile away by the torrential dust cloud that follows them. Stop signs and corners are only a second to pause briefly. I don’t think they even lift their foot off the gas when they come across the cattle guards. Shocks, struts, and other suspension items on the delivery van need changed on a regular basis but those brakes are as new as the day they were put on. For as crazy as some of these guys drive, you would think they would be fearless when it comes to a little mud on the county road but that is not the case. Inevitably, the sun can be shining, there won’t be a cloud in the sky, but one little mud puddle will prompt a notification that our package has been delayed due to weather.
Somehow when the package miraculously makes its way to my address, it’s a glorious game of hide and seek if we are not home at the time of delivery. I know the cows in the pasture look like shady individuals that moonlight as porch pirates, but I think the box will be safe on the front porch. You know how sometimes they send you a picture of the package on the porch to let you know it’s been delivered? That works great if it is in fact your porch that it was delivered to. I’ve had to call neighbors, post on the community social media page and go on numerous scavenger hunts to find my long-lost shoelaces that have traveled the world over. Turns out the porch picture was sent by mistake and the shoelaces were found the next time I lit the grill to cook supper. Delivery guys are truly the hide and seek champions of our generation.
There are definitely times when I wish that we lived closer to a larger town and could order a meal that was delivered to our home. However, after scraping grilled shoelace off my grill and waiting a month for packages that were guaranteed in two days, I think that the pizza I would order might be growing a new strain of penicillin before it made it to my doorstep. Such is life in rural America. That’s all for this time, keep tabs on your side of the barbed wire, and remember tracking numbers only work if they actually know where your order is.