Delivering mail is the career McKinley Carroll, affectionately known as “Mac,” had always dreamed of doing, even during the farming days of his youth in Sampson County. Over 40 years later, he’s hanging up his mail back, thankful for decades of doing a job he has always loved.
Carroll spent all those years as a mailman for the US Postal Service in Clinton where he’s driven the same route since he took the job in 1982. These days, good ol’ Mac, now over 70 years old, said he would still be loading up his truck for delivers if he could.
While he wanted to keep going, time, he said, was catching up with him, and his aches and pain were becoming more common. It was that realization that made Carroll decide it was time for retirement, a feeling. he said, that takes some getting use to.
“It is a different kind of life, it really is, but I am beginning to enjoy it,” he said. “Matter of fact, me and my wife were just coming back from Warsaw this morning as I’m speaking, so this is not the normal way I’ve usually started my day. That said, it’s a good feeling, it really is, but now I miss my job, I really do, I miss it.”
Carroll’s last official day was Friday Aug. 30, the weekend just before Labor Day.
