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Every year, athletic youths in Wisconsin’s Woworth County try out for a
unique summer job – mail jumping. They need to prove that they can jump
off of a moving boat onto a private dock, deliver the mail and then jump
back on the boat before it has passed by.
The residents of Lake Geneva have been getting mail delivered by boat
since before roads were built in the area, so the practice has become
somewhat of a local tradition, one that attracts loads of tourists to
the area. In fact, during the summer months, the mail boat can take
approximately 160 tourists along on mail delivery runs and operates at
full capacity almost every day. Watching and recording the jumping
mailmen deliver the mail to the around 60 homes on Lake Geneva is
something that many will gladly pay to be able to do.
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The United States Postal Service hires six jumping mailmen every summer,
and in order to select the very best, it holds yearly tryouts on Lake
Geneva. Candidates must prove that they are athletic enough to jump from
the mail boat moving at a speed of 5 mph onto the mail recipient’s
wooden dock, deliver their mail into the mailbox, and then jump back on
the boat before it passes by.
According to Wikipedia, a typical Lake Geneva postmen will miss the
return jump onto the mail boat at least once during their career, which
means they have to be fished out of the water and work the rest of the
day wet. Each postman jumps between 45 to 60 times a day, and some can
fall in the water several times a day.
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“The mailbox, it’s like 30 feet away from the boat, and then the mailbox
is facing toward shore, so it’s really hard to do that exchange and make
sure you get back on the boat, so you have to be going fast,” one
jumping mailman told WISN-Channel 12 in Milwaukee.
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For the youths that try out to be jumping postmen, mail jumping is just
a really cool summer job, but for the people of Lake Geneva, it’s a way
to preserve over a century of history. |