By Mindy Ragan Wood
Staff Writer
An Okarche mail carrier who witnessed the rapid changes in the mail and package delivery industry has retired.
Last Friday David Meschberger parked his carrier car for the last time after serving the Okarche post office for 17 years.
“The best part is all the people you got to meet,” Meschberger said. “There’s a lot of good people out there. The people I work with, the people I delivery to. It’s an excellent place to work.”
Meschberger is retiring for health reasons and said he would have stayed if his health had not limited his work abilities.
He recalled a time before smart phones, heavy truck traffic and the online commerce boom of Amazon and those that have followed.
“When I started we didn’t have all this oil truck traffic, these saltwater trucks,” he recalled.
“They run stop signs and they don’t care. They just take up the road even if you don’t have any road. I can remember driving out several miles where you wouldn’t see anybody there, but now all the time on these roads there’s a big truck.”
Mescheberger remembered when the roads were dirt or gravel, now paved to make way for more traffic.
“They’ve improved the roads since I started, especially in Canadian County,” he said. “Half those roads I couldn’t go down if it rained. Now we’ve got the good roads.”
He noted that mail delivery is down, with mostly bills, promotional mail and most of all, packages. Online commerce and the invention of the smart phone have changed a lot of things.
“I saw one girl driving down I-40 with both legs on the steering wheel and she had her phone (in her hands),” he said and laughed.
Being a rural mail carrier, he saw much more than people texting and driving. He once helped a customer with a grass fire.
“I saw the smoke and saw Charlie (Williamson) out there and I thought he was going to die,” he said noting Williamson had a heart condition. “We moved them old wagons out of the way and he had the water going. He called Cotton to get the fire department out there and got it all put out.”
