Amazon will never be neighbourly
“You have to be a neighbour to have a neighbour.” That’s Mark Jamison’s mantra — and he should know. Until he retired, after all, the 68-year-old was the postmaster in Webster, a small town enveloped by the mist and hollers of North Carolina’s Great Smoky Mountains. And while he surely dealt with letters and parcels, townsfolk brought Jamison their troubles too. The title of postmaster, he says, “gives you some heft” in a quiet place like Webster, where he was the only representative of the federal government. Between sorting mail, that authority meant he also wrote money orders for people who couldn’t read, or else deciphered tax statements. Sometimes, he just offered advice to the downtrodden or simply loosened the jars of old ladies driving home from the store.
