Delivering the mail for the U.S. Postal Service gave John Prine the freedom and security to hone his songwriting at the start of his career. These days, that's worth remembering
He did not consider himself a great mailman. While other carriers would finish up by 3:30 p.m., Prine was out hours longer on his routes. “I’d be out there so late, it’d be dark,” he said. “And people are having dinner and I’d have to go stand by their dining room window so I could get some light. I’m out in their yard, sorting for the next five houses between my fingers.”
But his mail route had one benefit: It turned out to be a great place to write songs. “I’d just go off into a dream world and stay out there and deliver the mail,” Prine said. The USPS route provided the time and space for Prine to reflect on the unordinary characters and emotions that came to define his music. “Those early songs, a lot of the stuff I was writing about were things I saw and felt and didn’t hear them in songs,” he said. “I certainly didn’t hear them in songs or the stories that I read, the novels. It was about certain silent things that people didn’t talk about. And when they were talked about, it was probably in an argument, or dismissed.
Prine also used his time delivering mail to reflect on the politics of the late Sixties. His mail route included delivering a lot of issues of. One of those issues included an American flag decal as the Vietnam War was heating up. “They didn’t say why, they just put a free flag decal in with every issue, and I had to deliver them,” Prine said. The following day, he noticed, “‘Everyone had stuck ’em either on their car or on their front door. It was the silent majority.
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