Idle American: Uncle Mort and the mailbox

My Uncle Mort is committed to establishing a Go Fund Me campaign for postal workers of America, retroactive to whenever early voting began.

He suggests joint beneficiaries - directing one-half of the proceeds to whichever "save the trees” group is standing tallest - and the other half to U.S. mail carriers.

Why, you may (or may not) ask?

Political candidates plead for we, the people, to elect them to public office. If we do, they promise to join - or be on the ground floor to establish credibility for that ages-old promise of being from the government and here to help us.

That’s what political candidates claim, using all means of communication, particularly printing presses operating 24/7. Thus we are barraged with often-tainted information about how wonderful they are, and how fouled-up, banged-up and bought-up are the low-lifers opposing them.

We grow weary of such, admitting that there are exceptions to politicians’ dog and pony shows, but not enough of them.

“During election season, if I don’t empty my mailbox daily, the second day’s mail won’t fit in,” Mort fumes.

Among his concerns are whether the U.S. Postal Service will replace his mail box when contents become too heavy. Further, he isn’t sure how long postal mail carriers will be able to walk routes, drooping more each day.

Mort - toiling in cotton fields during his youth from can ‘til can’t - pulled out his old cotton sack recently, putting it to good use once more. Shaking out the dust of many years, he’s stuffing all of the campaign literature that comes in the mail.

The contents won’t ever see the cotton scales, however. Butcher scales will be needed instead, since he intends to weigh materials from each candidate, then cast his vote for the ones whose campaign literature weighs the least.

This is his plan for all elections, local, state and national.

Hey, Mort may be on to something.

He says he never expected to hear so many ugly comments, so he’s hoping the candidates with the lightest printed material will also be the heaviest in civility. However, he shakes his head, wondering if this might be too much to expect. (Remember when civility was viewed as being central to most candidates?)

“When I was coming along, candidates said a few words if asked, and their printed material was usually confined to business cards showing their names and precious little more. Usually, the additional words were something like ‘your vote and support are appreciated.’”

Well, that was then and this is now.

Coming to mind is the old joke about a newspaper editor in a small town where a low life was running for the state legislature. He claimed the candidate wasn’t even capable of being dog catcher.

Furious, the politico demanded a retraction.

“I erred last week in suggesting that Joe Blow lacks credentials to be dog catcher. He does, but he’s not running for dog catcher. He’s running for the state legislature.”

Longtime president of Howard Payne University in Brownwood, Dr. Newbury resides in the Metroplex with Brenda, his wife of almost 60 years. Email: newbury@speakerdoc.com.