MR. MACK AND HIS LINCOLN ZEPHYR

WILLIAM PENN FALLIN
Columnist
Douglas, GA Enterprise
Natchitoches, LA Times
Camden County, GA Courier

MR. MACK AND HIS LINCOLN ZEPHYR

One of my chores during my fourth and fifth years (1935 and 1936) was watching for Mr. Mack. Mr. Mack was our rural mail carrier and he arrived like clockwork at 10:05 every morning unless it had been raining real heavily and the dirt roads were difficult to pass.

I would sit on the porch of our farmhouse and watch the intersection about 100 yards away. Rocky Ford Road and Baker Road intersected in the middle of our farm and Mr. Mack traveled along Baker Road. Our house sat in the Northwest corner and between the house and the road was Mama’s rose garden. The mailbox was at the corner of the rose garden.

Back then Mama bought her penny post cards from Mr. Mack. She would give me the pennies to put in the jar lid inside the mailbox. Mr. Mack knew those pennies were for postcards unless there was a letter in there. If that case he deducted 3 cents for the letter and left the remainder in penny postcards. Ah, the simple life.

One morning I was impatiently waiting for Mr. Mack when I saw a mysterious car stop at our mailbox. It was the biggest and most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Mr. Mack had bought a new LINCOLN ZEPHYR. I didn’t know it was one of the first ever built until I researched this column and learned that Ford had in fact introduced the LINCOLN ZEPHYR IN 1936.

What got me thinking about this in the first place was a recent Ford ad re-introducing the Lincoln Zephyr. It will never be as beautiful as that first one Mr. Mack drove up to our mailbox that morning in 1936.

A few months later I started school (two months prior to my 6th birthday) and one of the things I missed most was waiting for Mr. Mack but it was time to move on in the world. In the next few years I got to know more about that Lincoln Zephyr. Mr. Mack lived near our school and we kids got a look under the hood one day when Mr. Mack was tinkering with the engine. That V-12 monster still occupies a keen spot in my memory.

In those days a rural mail carrier’s job was much like getting appointed to the Supreme Court. It was for life and it paid well. A mail carrier’s job was one of the most cherished in any small town. Congressmen usually did the appointing and the recipients lived well thereafter. They ranked right up with the shop owners and even some bankers in small towns.

The time finally came for Mr. Mack to retire and our congressman (E. E. Cox (D GA)) wanted no part in alienating half the people on that route so he called a special election for Mr. Mack’s replacement. Two young local men tested and qualified for the job. One (Carnelle Barkley) was the son of a former member of the county draft board during THE WAR and the other (Jarvis Murphy) had lost his father when he was about five. Barkley had successfully dodged the draft due to his father’s influence while Murphy had enlisted in the Army Air Corps and finished training as a bombardier on a B-17.

His training finished, he was shipped off to England and on his very first mission, his plane was shot down by the Germans. He was captured by German farmers with pitchforks, imprisoned, freed by the advancing Russians, turned over to the Americans and returned home all within six months. I remember him telling about when he jumped from that falling B-17. That was the first time he had ever thought of jumping but he remembered being told to count to ten and pull the parachute ripcord. His description of his fear when that cord came all the way out into his hand was priceless … but it worked.

I’m sure you can guess who won that election to succeed Mr. Mack. Murphy was the rural mail carrier until he retired and I think he earned the right. Barkley eventually moved away to start anew somewhere else. I never believed he really wanted his father to protect him to the point of branding him a coward in the eyes of the community but it happened.

Oh yeah, the only name I ever knew other than Mr. Mack was his last name, McKibben. Everyone called him Mr. Mack.