Anne Nix from New Hampshire runs the only floating Post Office in the United States. The woman drives a postal boat to deliver mail to the residences of the small town of Laconia, N.H. Annie also happens to run an ice cream shop, is a tour guide, and a desk hand. It sounds kind of the like Deeds from Adam Sandler’s movie Mr. Deeds! Read more after the jump.
@Julie1205
Aboard the M/V Sophie C. tour boat, Anne Nix serves as deck hand, tour guide and ice cream vendor. And from a small closet packed with canvas bags, a scale and other supplies, she runs the nation’s only inland floating post office.
“Even when it rains, you don’t have a bad day on the mail boat. How can you have a bad day when you’re on the mail boat? You just can’t,” said Nix, who has spent each of her 58 summers on Lake Winnipesaukee. She works as a nurse and dietitian in Vermont when she’s not handling postal duties on the lake from mid-June to mid-September.
That sunny attitude stands in contrast to the gloomy outlook for the U.S. Postal Service. The agency has said that without congressional action, it could run out of money to pay salaries and contractors a year from now.
The White House said Wednesday it may consider giving the Postal Service a few extra months to make a required $5.5 billion payment to the Treasury, but that won’t provide a long-term solution.
After losing more than $8 billion last year, the Postal Service is pushing for changes that include reducing mail delivery to five days a week, withdrawing from federal retirement systems to set up its own and closing 3,700 offices.
Five post offices in New Hampshire are among those that will be examined for possible closure, but the Sophie C. isn’t one of them.
Nix said federal and state officials assessed its operations two years ago, but made no move toward closing the office. Still, the customers she serves on nine of the lake’s islands are worried. Most don’t want to see a tradition that began in 1892 come to an end.
At the smaller islands, including one with just a single home, Nix leans off the boat to grab mail bags hanging on posts from the docks. At the larger islands, she ties up the boat and hops off to fill rows of brightly painted mailboxes. Sometimes there are surprises.
“Why did you say, `Oh, that’s a big one!’ and shut that mailbox real fast?” a tourist on the boat’s roof deck asked her after one stop on Thursday. Answer: a spider.
More welcome are the four-legged critters who hear the boat’s horn and race to the dock are island pups who know Nix often has dog biscuits. On warm summer days, children swarm the boat to buy ice cream while their parents collect their mail and hand over packages, letters and bills.
“It’s extremely nice to have it. But it’s really more of a social scene,” said Jan Greer, a real estate agent from Houston who has been coming to Bear Island with her family for 30 years. “The way the island is situated, with the houses just all around the outside, that’s sometimes the only time you see people and know they’re here.”
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