Last week, after 34 years of operating the gas pedal with her left foot from the passengers seat, smoothly steering with her left hand along the shoulders of thousands of miles of local roads as she stuck letters and packages out the window into mailboxes, Vicki Lindley finally hit the brakes for good.
A rural postal delivery person for that entire span, Lindley, 62, said she is ready to retire.
She’s been there through some 30 bosses, supervisors and postmasters, said co-worker Pam Brown, who has worked with her since 1989.
“She’s been real dedicated to her customers and to the employees here,” Brown said.
That word dedication comes up multiple times when Lindle’s colleagues talk about her, whether it’s delivering mail or rescuing cats, another focus of her life.
Lindley said her U.S. Mail career has been a good run.
“It’s been a great job,” she said. I’ve enjoyed it and I’ve always enjoyed the driving. There came a time in the last couple of months when I realized it was time to retire. They say you know when it’s time and it’s time.
“I’ve worked with a great group of people at the Post Office. Of course, we’re not infallible. But they are all very conscientious and hard workers.”
A nearly 50-year resident of Sweet Home, she moved to Sweet Home at 13 with her parents from Ashland after her father took a job managing the local Chevrolet dealership, Lindley, whose maiden name was Frederick, graduated in 1969 from Sweet Home High School.
She married and had two sons, Chris and Todd. Then, at 28, she was hired as a substitute carrier for one of the then-three rural routes serviced from the Sweet Home Post Office. She subbed for nine years before moving into a regular route.
She was the regular carrier for Route 3, which included the Pleasant Valley and Berlin Road areas, for seven years, then took over Route 2, the Highway 228 area, after Don Seiber retired in 1995. She stayed on that route for 11 years before switching to Route 1, which includes the Foster, North River and Liberty areas, which is where she’s been since 2006.
“When a regular retires, you can bid on that route,” Lindley said. “I was the senior carrier for those years so I could move around. It was kind of nice to have a change of scenery.”
She’s gone through six vehicles and has 232,000 miles on the Honda CRV she drives now, but she’s never figured how many miles she’s actually driven from the passenger’s seat.
“I’m just trying to get us both to be able to finish the route,” she joked Wednesday, during her second-to-last delivery. I don’t know who is going to crash first, me or the car.”
Actually, she’s never crashed, despite the awkward driving position required by driving regular left-hand-steering vehicles.
“I’ve always driven Hondas, for the most part,” she said. “I just stretch. I tell people I walk funny because my left side is longer than my right. I’m trying to be an acrobat, I guess.”
Lindley said she’ll be happy not to have to deal with winter weather she encountered, particularly on her most recent route, which runs through the Wiley Creek, Riggs Hill and Whiskey Butte areas.
“I won’t miss the snow and the ice,” she said. “And the breakdowns. All those flat tires. All the time.”
Despite the six-ply truck tires she has on her SUV, she said when the county grades Whiskey Butte Road, “it turns up things” that puncture tires. Then there are the brake jobs every six or eight months.
She’s a regular customer at Les Schwab, where she buys tires, and at O&M Tires, where she has other repairs done, she said.
One of her clearest memories is the great flood of February 1996, when she had the Highway 228 route and was barred by Oregon National Guard troops from driving up Upper Calapooia Drive to deliver mail.
She’s seen lots of wildlife; deer and coyotes, foxes; but no cougars.
“I saw a momma bear and two cubs up on Berlin Road,” she said. “That was my biggest as far as wildlife goes.”
One of Lindley’s strengths is a good memory for numbers, said fellow rural carrier Karen Arnold, who delivers Route 3.
“She has this thing that she remembers numbers very well,” said Arnold, who is in her 32nd year of delivery. “That helped her with casing mail. She could remember everybody’s birthdays and address. I always had to ask her, ‘When did I start?’ ‘What year was this?’ ‘What year was that?’ She could remember all of that.”
Now that she’s retired, Lindley said she plans to focus on one of her other interests: rescuing, neutering and adopting out homeless cats.
“Cat rescue is a huge part of my life,” she said. “I’m going to work my second full-time job, which is kitty angel team adoptions. That’s a big passion of mine. Plus, I have some projects to do in my house.”
She’s single, but her son Chris and his wife and daughter live in Tigard, and her other son, Todd, is a missionary translator with Wycliffe Bible Translators, working in Papua New Guinea with his wife and two children.
“The kids will be home next spring for a furlough and this is a big deal for me,” Lindley said, noting that is another reason why she’s calling it quits. “I want to spend time with them.”
Lindley, co-workers said, has been consistently “pleasant” and “empathetic” in an environment that has been stressful as the Post Office has faced financial and logistical challenges in recent years.
“We’ve all been through a lot of different changes,” Brown said. “We’re kind of a big family, so we stick together and support each other. We spend a lot of our lives together. We’ve had kids and grandkids, and we’ve all been part of each other.
“Vicki has been really passionate about what she does: cats, children, family, friends and her job.
“She’s put a lot of effort into this, a lot of dedication.”