BY MILES LAYTON, Eastern Shore Post —
A small-town post office is a community gathering spot and it is a lifeline to the mainland for the island of Tangier in the Chesapeake Bay.
Tangier is about 12 miles from the mainland at Crisfield, Md., with the mail boat, the Courtney Thomas, running six days a week, weather permitting, across the Tangier Sound between Maryland and Virginia.
Postmaster Dolores Daley is a familiar face to many on the island, with her glasses and warm smile — she talks to everyone as they check their mail.
Daley explained what she likes best about working at the post office, a centerpiece of the town.
“I like that I can stay right in my hometown, and I like that everybody comes to me,” she said. “I know everybody on a first-name basis.”
A lifelong resident of Tangier, Daley, 67, has worked for the post office for 38 years.
There’s no mail delivery to home or business addresses on the island, so Tangier’s 400 residents receive their mail in tiny post office boxes that have served the community for decades.
“Because of our location and how close everybody is, we don’t have any mail carriers,” Daley said.
Folks can pick up their mail anytime, but afternoons are when the latest mail arrives, so that is “when people tend to visit the post office the most to talk and share news about their friends, family, or neighbors,” Daley said.
Remember the golden ticket from the movie “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”? On Tangier, a golden ticket is the yellow post office letter announcing the arrival of a package. Folks get excited because they know they’ve received something good from the mainland.
“The golden ticket is the card — the yellow card — that says come and get your package,” Daley said with a smile. “And when the package is too big, which most of them are, to go into the post office box, we put that card in and you bring it in to get your package. Most people like the yellow slips and they call them golden tickets.”
Whether it’s rubber boots for wet weather or high tides, or a laptop for a soon-to-be college student, many packages from Amazon arrive each day.
“We get everything,” she said. “We get grass cutters through here occasionally. We get a lot of things through here. We just got chicks the other day. We’ve received caterpillars for the island’s school to turn into butterflies when they do science projects.”
Important announcements from town hall or residents are taped to the windows by the front door leading into the post office, whether it’s the time and date for the island’s annual homecoming or news of a funeral service.
“We’ve always been a big part of the community,” Daley said. “We have a bulletin board of the things that are happening in the town because everyone is going to stop by the post office.”
Married to a longtime waterman, Mickey Daley, now retired, Daley said she loves island life.
“I love living here, being here,” she said. “People here — we can go off and tend to anything we need on the mainland and come back when we’ve had enough. Living here in Tangier is my most favorite thing.”
