Mainstreet Radio’s Rachel Reabe finds herself on the water of Lake Vermilion to witness one of the few mail delivery services left in the states and talks with those receiving the aquatic delivery.
Mainstreet Radio’s Rachel Reabe finds herself on the water of Lake Vermilion to witness one of the few mail delivery services left in the states and talks with those receiving the aquatic delivery.
JIM KOLSTAD: Jim Kolstad, and I'm your captain on the mail boat here today. And we're going to go 97 miles today. And we have, I think, 70 stops.
RACHEL REABE: And the United States Mail is on its way to the mostly summer residents of Lake Vermilion, a big, island-studded lake that stretches 50 miles across St Louis County in Northeastern Minnesota. Jim Kolstad, a tan, 30-year-old part-time artist looks at home behind the wheel of the 20-foot speedboat powered by a 140-horsepower engine.
On a hot, calm, late summer morning, the boat cuts across the smooth water quickly and pulls up to its first stop, a mailbox mounted on a swivel pole at the end of a long wooden dock. A young boy who must have been watching for the mail boat sprints from the cabin just up the hill, down to the dock.
JIM KOLSTAD: Hello. Are you going back pretty soon?
SPEAKER 2: Yeah, I'm going back today.
JIM KOLSTAD: You're leaving today? Well, that's too bad. Will I see you next summer?
SPEAKER 2: Yeah.
JIM KOLSTAD: You have a good winter, bud.
SPEAKER 2: You too.
JIM KOLSTAD: OK?
SPEAKER 2: Bye.
RACHEL REABE: The arrival of the mail, six days a week, is a social event on Lake Vermilion. Residents stroll to their docks to exchange pleasantries with Kolstad, comment on their fishing luck, introduce summer company. On this remote lake, the daily contact with the outside world seems as important as the mail that's exchanged. Lois Sauerbride.
LOIS SAUERBRIDE: For many years, I was out here in the summer all by myself. And often, there was no one else in our bay. And it was the one person I saw during the day was the mail boat person. Until weekends, people would come up. But during the week, there was never anyone around. So it was wonderful.
RACHEL REABE: There are only a handful of water mail routes left in the United States. And they're expensive to run. Bill Wennerstrom of the United States Postal Service in Duluth estimates that it costs four times as much to operate the mail route on Lake Vermilion as it would a typical rural route.
BILL WENNERSTROM: It's a premium service that we cannot really afford to give anymore. At one time, when we didn't have cars and everything else like that, when these were established, they may have had their usefulness. But at the present time, everybody's got cars, and boats, and everything else. I don't see where we can justify it anymore.
RACHEL REABE: But because the Postal Service has a policy of maintaining mail routes once they've been established, there are no plans to drop Minnesota's remaining water mail route. Mail boat driver Jim Kolstad works for Aronson Boat Works in Tower. They've delivered the mail on Lake Vermilion, under contract with the Postal Service since 1923.
Current owner John Aronson said his father started delivering mail on the lake as a natural extension of his livery service that hauled building materials, passengers, and groceries to the resorts and cabins on the lake. John started running the heavy 50-foot launches when he was 14 years old.
JOHN ARONSON: I remember my dad sending me out in the lake with one of the big launches. And the waves were so high, I would break out 15 or 20 windows in those launches because the water would come right through the boat. And I would come back here and tell my dad that it's just too rough, I just can't get through it. And he'd send me right back out there, and he says, you've got to go through it. And I would. And I made it. I maybe sunk two boats during my time.
RACHEL REABE: This year, the Postal Service will pay Aronson Boat Works $12,000 to deliver mail to Lake residents from June 1 to September 5. Aronson says although they don't make money on it, they continue to deliver mail because it's tradition and good public relations for his boat company.
JOHN ARONSON: What the government pays for this route is just a drop in the bucket. Like I say, you couldn't even buy a boat and motor for what they pay us a year on the contract. Morning, Randall.
RAND STURDY: What a crowd, what a crowd.
JOHN ARONSON: Are the cinnamon rolls done?
[LAUGHTER]
RAND STURDY: Cinnamon rolls, you never told me about cinnamon rolls.
JOHN ARONSON: Well, you're supposed to have them ready for us.
RAND STURDY: Thank you.
RACHEL REABE: Rand Sturdy, who lives on one of Vermillion's 365 islands, says daily mail service enables him to run his financial consulting business from his cabin. Although mail has been delivered for almost 70 years on Lake Vermillion, Sturdy wonders how long it will continue.
RAND STURDY: And I'm concerned that some cost cutters will just say, well, this is frivolous, or this is unnecessary. And to me, it's not. It's very necessary. It's very important. Especially for me in a, what should I say, an island setting, a rural setting. I think it's a godsend. This mail boat is my only link to civilization. If it wasn't for this guy, I'd forget the English language.
RACHEL REABE: Lake Vermilion island resident Rand Sturdy. I'm Rachel Reabe.
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