Unreliable geographies by Aeneas McHaar
No. 2: Rodney Street, Helena, Montana, USA
46º 36’ N, 112º 00’ W
Focused around the main street of ‘Last Chance Gulch’, Helena is a former gold rush camp which is now the state capital of Montana in the US. In 1888, around 50 millionaires lived in the city, more even than are found today in our own Broughton Street. The ‘Queen City of the Rockies’ boasts of dazzling 19th-century architecture, compelling history, and arts and culture reflecting a richly talented community. However, her posties aren’t happy.
On average each year, 47.5 inches of snow fall on Helena, rendering Rodney Street – a steepish incline to the SW of the city – a traction-lite challenge. In October 2009, US Postal Service Customer Service Supervisor Charles Lawellin told Larry Kline of the Independent Record (IR) that carriers ‘had issues with the slope every winter’. One (postie not issue) had slid sideways down most of the Rodney hill last winter and was lucky not to have rolled the vehicle.
‘As our Postal vehicles are not 4-wheel drive,’ continued Lawellin, ‘the carriers have become adept at using their parking brake in conjunction with quickly turning the wheel to straighten out their sliding vehicle, and this practice is just too hazardous to allow it to continue.’
Underpowered, ageing, 20-year-old vans add to the problem (compared to the situation in Edinburgh, where underpowered, ageing, 20-year-old posties with a party habit have trouble reaching the top floors of tenements).
An unimpressed Rodney St retiree – Tom Bump – is more disgruntled than usual and does not sympathise with the postmen’s plight. ‘I’ve lived here for 33 years, and we’ve always had postal service, and the garbage truck always makes it up,’ he told the IR.
‘I’ve always made it home with a front-wheel drive. There’s no reason they can’t deliver mail. We have good roads. They’re wide, they’re graded. I live in the city – there’s no reason I shouldn’t have services to my house.’
Mr Bump is tiresomely familiar and probably right. However, under proposed changes, Rodney St residents may soon lose their delivery service and be forced to attend a central post office to send and receive mail: a central East Telferton of the West.