Now It can be told

Scene of the crime:  Except for the Keybank Building which was not even a gleam in an architect's eye in the summer of 1968,  the newer cars parked outside, and all the trees, now missing, which made this location on that Saturday an off-the-beaten-path location, this is where I either facilitated a break-in or saved a secretary a whole weekend of dire lonely captivity in an old Flats warehouse restroom.

My First, and Last, Living Wage Job

All right, in 1968, graduated from college, half a year of graduate study, and a couple of years of chronic depression, I was grateful to be a mailman. I don't remember what the economic conditions were in those years but for me they weren't good. Because of my appearing exceptionally young for my years and probably having a voice pitched high enough to make the appearance credible, I was often laughed out of interviews with a casual, "Look, kid, I don't know who you're trying to fool, but when you get out of high school, give us another shot." 

Or the jobs just didn't pay enough to support a young couple intending soon to be married. I could have gotten into IT early on but learning Fortran and Cobol seemed dreadfully dull at the time and churning out deckfuls of mysteriously punched IBM cards looked like asking Death to kiss you goodnight. Gates and Jobs were probably still friends working in a garage somewhere. I had no crystal ball but I had taken a civil service test for the Post Office. All I had to do was wait for them to write me again instead of pitching the invitations into the waste basket every month. 

So I was a beginning part-time substitute mailman and I was delivering that Saturday on what was called a "mounted" route, a term thrown back not to the Pony Express (which was a contract service, never part of the Post Office) but to delivery involving a vehicle, possibly in earlier years a horse-drawn vehicle. 

What was delightful about this was that on a business route on a Saturday the carrier didn't even take out half the mail, leaving it in the office for businesses who chose not to have a Saturday delivery. Yet one was expected to take the full time for the route and not come in early. Yea! Lots of free time and a Jeep to drive about anywhere you wanted to go on a Saturday. 

In those days the Post Office was pretty much a hiring arm of the federal government and there was lots of slack. Unlike today's Postal Service which is driven by twin devils of government bureaucracy and business efficiency where people are subject to shooting each other if anyone is pushed just a little too hard.

"Mailman, help me! Help me, mailman!"

The area was in downtown Cleveland, actually just down the hillside from Ontario near what was then the Eagle Street ramp. But it was virtually invisible in that corner of the turn of Canal Road. The Cuyahoga flowed another plateau down and could not be seen except from the rear of the old warehouses which dated back to the 1850s or earlier. One could hear the traffic from the busy streets above but Canal Road on a Saturday was like being on the moon. And this was even before we landed on the moon. 

There were several stops along this stretch but few cars parked in the area--not unusual. As I ascended the rickety wooden stairs of the third stop I first tried the doorknob to deliver in person if I could, but the door was locked. Through the glass I could see no one inside and the lights were out. There was a slot in the door and as I pushed the tied up letters and magazines in through the slot I thought I heard a voice calling, "Help me, mailman, help me." 

I looked around. There was no one in sight. I let the slot clamp shut and again I heard the voice but this time much quieter. I knelt down and pushed the slot open so I could see and hear directly and shouted into it, "Hello, is anyone there? I just delivered your mail." 

"Mailman, Oh, my God, thank you but don't leave me," a lady's voice clearly cried out. "Whatever you do don't leave. I've locked myself in the restroom by accident." She explained she had come in to complete some office work and when she went to the restroom the door closed behind her and locked somehow so that she couldn't open it. "Nobody knows I'm here. If I can't get out, I'll be here alone until they come in Monday morning. You're my only hope." 

"Well, look, I can't be breaking into places, but I can call the police to help you, when, and if, I find a place open, which to be blunt, isn't likely to happen." These were the days before cellphones could commonly be found in every pocket and purse.  

"Take a rock and break the glass. Then come in and let me out. Look, I've got other stuff to do today and I don't want my family to worry while the police take all day to decide to help me," she stated. "Don't worry about the glass. The company will pay for repairs." 

"Lady, I'm not comfortable at all about this." I replied getting more nervous about the whole deal. 

"How comfortable will you be on Monday morning when I tell your boss about  refusing to help me?" she queried. 

Here Come the Gang, er, Door, Busters

I felt like I was sinking into a quagmire but now I couldn't just leave her. I checked the area for a rock and found a board I thought would work. "Here goes," I warned her. The glass didn't break until the third whack and it shattered into the office just like in the movies. Now I'm thinking somebody will drive by and see me at the broken door with the board in my hand and think, "Man, when they say they deliver, don't get in their way." 

I carefully reached in, unlatched the inside lock, and pushed the door over the shards. "I'm over here," came a voice from a door down the hallway. I carefully tried the doorknob which refused to rotate. "It's locked," I said stupidly. "I know that. Can you break in?" "Ma'am, I'm not a big guy but I could try."

[If you are now thinking, "This guy is a nut," I don't blame you one bit.] 

It's amazing how hard you have to hit a door to burst it open, and how much it hurts when it stops you like a rhinoceros slamming into a bridge abutment. "Third time is charmed, they say," at which point the door crashes to the floor rather than just opening and the young, powerful part-time substitute letter carrier goes sliding over its surface and ends up in a lump at the feet of the helpless maiden, who was standing there with the door's three hinge pins in her hand.

"I knocked these out with the heel of my shoe, but I still couldn't open the door," she took pains to explain as I rose from a crumpled heap and pointed at the pins. I felt like telling her that if she had mentioned the hinge pins I would have instructed her to pull on the hinges little by little to get the door open--no broken glass, no crushed shoulder. However, by then I realized I could have done a lot of things differently and let it slide.

Sheepishly neither asked for the other's name. I said I was glad to have been some help while thinking the sore shoulder should be fine by the route's end. When I got back to the post office, my shoulder was still hurting and I thought, "My boss doesn't need to know about this."