Customers offer love letters as treasured White Bear Lake mail carrier retires

Mary Divine, Pioneer Press
·5 min read

Joel Meline never dreamed of being a mailman.

In 1981, Meline was studying chemical engineering at the University of Minnesota when he ran out of money for tuition. A few days later, he spotted an ad in the Minnesota Daily for an upcoming postal carrier exam at one of the lecture halls on campus.

Meline, then 22, signed up, passed the exam and started working in the Dayton’s Bluff neighborhood of St. Paul. “I thought, ‘OK, I can make some money and go to school at night maybe,’” he said, “but then life kind of happens.”

Stints in downtown St. Paul, the Midway neighborhood, Rice Street, New Brighton and North St. Paul followed.

Two years later, Meline bid for a spot in White Bear Lake and never left.

“The best part is the customers,” said Meline, 63, of Vadnais Heights, who retires Friday after 41 years on the job. “That’s the whole point — your customers. When you’re on a route for a long time, you see kids going from kindergarten to high school and graduating. Customers are the raison d’etre. They’re the reason that we do this.”

Meline’s customers in White Bear Lake are celebrating him this week by decorating their mailboxes with balloons and showering him with notes and treats.

“He has been the best postal carrier ever,” said Kerri Kolstad, who helped organize the farewell festivities.

“He always would wave and smile and give the dogs treats. Even if he had to come to the door to deliver a package, there would always be a dog bone on it for Addie,” Kolstad said of her border collie/springer spaniel mix.

Meline’s constant presence on Evergreen Circle was especially welcome during the coronavirus pandemic, said Linda Vukelich, who works from home.

“He was such a lifeline,” she said. “No matter what we have delivered here, he is never frustrated with it. It’s sad to think about him leaving because he’s been such a touchpoint, such a familiar face. He’s part of our neighborhood, part of our little community.”

Mike Duesenberg said you could set a clock by Meline.

“He’s very consistent,” he said. “When I hear him, I like to come out and see him and say hi. He’s an extra set of eyes in the neighborhood. It’s comforting to know that he can look out for us in the event that we are gone. We’re going to miss him dearly.”

The job hasn’t always been easy. Meline said he’s had to deliver mail when it’s been 100 degrees out and when the wind chill has been 50 below. “When it’s that cold, you’re running between houses to try and generate body heat,” he said.

Working in a mail truck without air conditioning when it’s 100-plus out means you’re essentially “sitting in a greenhouse,” he said. “It can be miserable, and I won’t miss that. The faster you drive, the more breeze you get.”

He’s lost track of the number of times he’s been bitten by angry dogs. “You try to avoid them, but they do happen,” said Meline, who keeps a bag of Milk-Bone dog treats in his mail truck. “It’s generally from dogs whose owners are saying the dog doesn’t bite just as they’re clomping on to your leg.”

Three years ago, Meline said, he was handing a package to a customer through their front door when their barking dog bit him on the hand. “I said, ‘Your dog just bit me.’ And he said, ‘No, he didn’t.’ I showed him my hand, which was bleeding, and I said, ‘Um, yeah, he did.”

For the record, the U.S. Postal Service does not condone the handing out of dog treats by postal carriers, he said.

“Officially, they aren’t allowed, but it’s a strategy that makes dogs friendly,” he said. “Dogs are great.”

For many years, Meline did all the carrier training in White Bear Lake. “It’s not an easy job,” he said. “It’s a simple job, but there are lots of pieces to it. Brand-new people would come to tears trying to just do the job. I said, ‘If anybody is going to cry, it’s me. I’ve been here longer.’ But it’s overwhelming the first few days, the first few weeks, because you’re paying attention to so many things that you don’t really have to after you sort of catch on.”

Meline, who grew up in Circle Pines, met his late wife, Kim, when they were in third grade. They started dating when they were sophomores at Centennial High School and both got jobs at the local Dairy Queen, he said. They graduated in 1977, married in 1978 and had a daughter, Katie Jo Meline.

Kim Meline died in May of complications related to idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. She was 63.

Meline took six months off to care for Kim prior to her death. After returning to work last month, he decided it was time to retire.

“It’s time to go,” he said. “The repetitive motion of twisting and turning and lifting, it catches up to you. This was a temporary job. Forty-one years later, I still look at it that way.”

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With retirement on the horizon, Meline said he is thinking of re-enrolling at the U of M and finishing his degree.

“I’ve got three years of calculus, which really applies to this job,” he said. “My parents made a bet with each other as to whether I would ever finish school. I don’t know which one of them bet I would never finish, but I want to prove whichever one that was wrong.”

But, he says, he will miss his customers in White Bear Lake.

“Everyone has just been great,” he said. “That’s the whole point of this job — your customers. I don’t feel like I work for the post office as much as I work for my customers. A good mail carrier is a treasure. Bad ones are complained about constantly, and you understand why because there are a lot of them. It’s their job, and they hate it, and they don’t care.

“But the good ones, they’re a treasure,” he said. “They’re an asset to your neighborhood, and I tried to be that.”