...remember the rest of that phrase? How could ya not... Anyway the point of this missive is ta support the Postal Service. Buy stamps, mail yer letters, and packages by USPS. Use yer mailbox for cards and letters ta granny, and the cousins in Florida, or Arizona...

Please keep the Post Office viable and moving the mail! Lotsa people are depending on ya. Especially our old frien... BoiseBoatBoy, AKA: Brain. Let's not forget his motto... Never mind!

In Florida, These Retirees Deliver a First-Class Protest

Town of Former Letter Carriers Strives to Aid Post Office; Shunning Email, Dogs...

By JENNIFER LEVITZ

NALCREST, Fla.Lots of folks are fretting over how to save the U.S. Postal Service, but retirees here in central Florida's citrus country are really pushing the envelope.

A retirement community in Florida caters to retired mail carriers with the U.S. Postal Service. WSJ's Jennifer Levitz finds many prefer mail to email, and no dogs are allowed.

There is heavy pressure in Nalcrest, a rambling retirement community that is its own little town, to use the U.S. mail, rather than email or competing shipping companies, to pay bills and mail parcels to the grandkids. "We sayit's got to come through the U.S. mail or we don't want it here," said Matty Rose, 67 years old, manager of Nalcrest.

One can't blame the town. Seventy miles east of Tampa, it's the nation's only haven solely for retired postal service mail carriers.

The attachment to mail runs deep. Residents joke that Nalcrest, which stands for the National Association of Letter Carriers Retirement, Education, Security and Training, is actually short for National Association of Letter Carriers at Rest. It has its own mailing address and post office. A mailman statue graces the village square. There is a stamp club, and a minigolf course, where the obstacle on the first hole isn't a windmill but a blue mail collection box.

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Carriers who spent years pounding the pavement relax under palm trees in a kind of mail carrier bliss: no ice to tumble on, no snow to slosh through, and best of all, no furry foes.

"This is a no-dog community," said Mr. Rose, a retired mailman from Hollywood, Fla. "That's because if you're a letter carrier, you've had experience with dogs. In my career, I was bit twice and chased about 100 times."

Now the 700 residents are fighting a new menace: the crisis enveloping the 236-year-old postal service, which is bleeding cash as technology erodes volumes of first-class mailand raising questions about whether traditional mail is going the way of the buggy whip.

"It stinks," said Robert Riley, 89, a former mailman from Wrentham, Mass., resting in a golf cart parked in Nalcrest's sun-drenched village square.

Congress is debating multiple proposals to revamp the agency, including dropping Saturday delivery and closing thousands of post offices that are unprofitable. A perceived assault on their beloved profession has Nalcrest in a tizzy.

"Why? Why? Then they got to make some 80- or 90-year-old woman go two or three miles to the next post office," said Frank Wright, 70, who carried mail in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. "The post office was originally meant to be a service to the people, not a profit-making operation."

Posted on the community bulletin board, by bingo announcements, are alerts about the postal service's recent proposal to pull out of federal health plans and run its own less-costly onean idea that has retirees anxious about their benefits. March's "Nalcrest Monthly Bulletin" touted softball, horseshoes, a coming party"our past winner of musical chairs just had a hip replaced so everyone has a chance this year"and invited everyone to the auditorium to discuss the postal service and "get on board" to save it.

They sent a 600-signature petition to Washington, by first-class mail, against dropping Saturday delivery, and raised $350 to send to their national union's lobbying arm. "That's the money we buy off the Congressmen with," cracked John Alversa, 72, a retired mailman from Flushing, N.Y.

Bill LaFrana, 69, and retired from carrying mail in Lexington, Ky., has written to Congress and his local paper back home against the postal service's proposal to slow delivery of some mail to save money. "That just wasn't acceptable when I had to work," he said.

His girlfriend, Ellen Hollon, 72, said all the talk about the postal service is no fun.

"Every time a news blip comes up, it occupies even a barbecuethe wives and girlfriends will finally say, 'hey,'" she said, making a timeout gesture with her hands. "We don't want to hear this mailman stuff."

The retirees acknowledge the postal service must make changes to stay afloat. Theyand the postmaster general, and some members of Congresssay one solution would be to ease an unusual requirement imposed by Congress in 2006 that the agency aggressively fund retiree benefits decades ahead.

Supporters of the pre-funding, including U.S. Rep. Dennis Ross, (R., Fla.), say it will insure the agency can provide benefits for retireeslike the ones in Nalcrestfar down the road and that the tab doesn't fall to taxpayers.

Nalcrest residents picketed outside Mr. Ross's local office last fall. They had hoped for a bigger crowd, "but a lot of the snowbirds weren't here yet," said Janet Russo, 63, a retired postal clerk whose late husband carried mail in Medford, Mass.

Mr. Ross said changes he is proposing won't likely affect Nalcrest retirees, but that he isn't surprised they are mad at him. "Change never comes easy," he said.

The community, where the modest mint-green cottages start at $395 per month, broke ground in 1962, the brainchild of William Doherty, a former Ohio mail carrier and union leader, who envisioned a low-cost retirement haven entirely owned and funded by letter carriers through union dueswhich long ago paid off the mortgage. The postal service contributes no money toward the town.

Nalcrest has its own ZIP Code. "We had a little pull with the post office," says Mr. Rose, the manager.

The village has a barber shop, cafe and market. Each morning, residents head to the busy and profitable post office to retrieve mail from their boxesno door-to-door delivery hereyelling to the clerk, in mailman lingo, "is first-class up?"