DuluthCommunityNews

John Hunn’s official title, "Letter Carrier," is stitched on his navy blue jacket, standard issue for U.S. Postal Service workers.

Now 59, he says “I can almost do it in my sleep.�

His eyes squint when the blustery winter wind off the lake bites his face. In a headwind, his jacket hood is futile.

Starting at 6:30 each morning, Hunn sorts mail for a couple of hours and then walks his beat for the remaining six to eight hours of his shift.

His left hand sports a winter glove and clutches a city block's worth of mail. His right hand is not so fortunate. It is bare to facilitate handling the thin envelopes. Whenever a moment can be spared, he buries it in the warm depths of his coat pocket.

"Some people couldn't stand to do this because of the weather extremes," says Hunn. "Just like if some people worked in a cubicle, they'd get bored out of their skulls."
He seems to be one of the latter.

Approaching an iron-fenced yard, Hunn is broadsided by thunderous barking. A hello of sorts.

Hunn reacts to the greeting with a grin.

"Oh, that’s just Elvis," he chuckles. "He's pretty nice." He quickly adds, "But I wouldn't stick my arm inside the fence."

Elvis is a Hungarian Kuvasz. Shaggy, white, and nearly the size of a motorcycle, Elvis could pass for a polar bear.

"Oh, he's down to 160 pounds now!" says Elvis’ owner, Elizabeth Adams, commenting on the dog’s improving health.

Hunn knows the people in his beat well. But the familiarity is not a result of peeking at their packages.

"The myth is that we get to know you by the mail we deliver," Hunn explains. "But actually, I get to know them better by just talking two or three minutes a day. Just spending the small time communicating with people, you get to know them pretty well."

He chats with Adams a bit longer and then stepping over a snow drift, follows a gravel driveway to a house set far back in the dunes, flipping through the letters as he walks.

Hunn ducks through a stone gate and navigates a path through several towering, labyrinth-like stacks of split firewood. His destination is the mailbox of an old rustic tudor.

Stepping over the ornate, rusty sundials and carved lawn decorations that are strewn about the porch, he explains, "These people used to have an antique shop."
It seems that it was the shopping that left the antique shop; because the antiques certainly haven't.

At a small house near the end of the block, Hunn turns aside into the yard to repair a section of a retaining wall where some bricks had fallen off. As he stoops in the snow, rebuilding the wall, he says "This fellow is an older guy. I think he has a hard time, sometimes."

Hunn steps back to inspect his work. Satisfied, he tramps onward, treading squarely in the tracks he made yesterday.