TRANSCRIPT

WW - Wes[ley] Washington, interviewee / LR - Lyn Royce, interviewer

WW: [I went through] particular hell delivering my mail, but I loved my job. I loved my job. And I knew everybody - I knew over 50,000 out of 89,000 people. And I could do the route faster than they could do it. And we used to have a 'nixie', used to have a 'nixie'...

LR: What's a 'nixie?'

WW: A 'nixie' is a thing that people... the regular mailman couldn't, couldn't find out where these people lived, and had a bad address on 'em and all that. So Stan Stewart, Russ Black, Ed Mallett, and me, we had turned around, and we'd get there, and we'd turn around and put the addresses on 'em, and hand 'em back to the clerk, so the clerk could turn around and give it to, to the regular letter carrier.

LR: Ah, okay.

WW: So, what... they couldn't... they, they didn't know nothin' about that. But we would turn around and find this all out and give it, give it back to the letter carriers. Another time I got a letter and it says Upstairs... and it was in the, right across Ontario, and it says Upstairs-Downstairs. And the guy wrote it and he was from Germany. He stayed at the Venetian Hotel and they, they had a bar, Downstairs-Upstairs. And he wrote it, but he had a girl write it, 'cause he, he, he spoke German, and the girl only could put on there, 'near Clifton Hill, Upstairs-Downstairs.' So I seen that letter, I figured it out and I de... had it delivered to the Venetian Hotel and the owner... They opened the letter and they, they found out that I turned around and forwarded it and they turned around and they, they turned around and told me about it, and the Germ... the guy from Germany, he turned around, and he was as multi-millionaire, he wanted the people from the Venetian Hotel to fly to Germany and he'd pay the whole expense for 'em.