I have had sort of a love/hate relationship with the U.S. Mail and Postal System my entire half-century career in the weekly newspaper business. That is because one of the biggest things for a newspaper is to get the paper out into the people’s hands.

My first day of a paid job at a newspaper had nothing to do with writing a story.

After a non-paid career as the sports editor of the Bethany Lutheran College Scroll newspaper, and an unpaid job as a reporter for the Mankato State College Daily Reporter newspaper, my first paid position was as summer intern reporter at the Lake Region Life in Waterville, and its sister papers of the Morristown Life and Elysian Enterprise.

My first day at work had nothing to do with being a reporter. I drove that week’s completed pages to the printing plant in Waseca, then drove the printed copies of all three papers back to Waterville.

After that I learned how all the newspapers were addressed using an old, large Address-O-Graph machine that used stencils with addresses to ink each address onto each paper. Plus, if there were advertising inserts to put in the newspapers (and there always were) then those had to be hand inserted into each paper. And then use a bundling machine that tied string around each bundle. And then each bundle went into certain huge mailbags, except for the local papers that did not go in a bag. All of the bundles and bags were then loaded up and taken to the three post offices, in Waterville, Elysian and Morristown.

That printing, addressing, and mailing of all the newspapers consumed all day Tuesday. No story-writing for me that day.

My boss, and mentor, and eventual business partner, Allan Wilcox, said that the process of printing and mailing out the newspapers was the most important thing in the newspaper business.

“You can write as many award-winning stories as you want,” he would say. “But if the newspaper does not get sent out, no one will read those stories.”

That was back in the 1970s, and there was no internet, computers, web sites or social media. The printed word was actually printed.

While three of us employees in the Waterville office worked on the addressing and bagging of the newspaper, another employee was working on the paper work necessary to mail out the newspapers.

That was also a complicated process. And it still is.

When you mail a letter, you put a stamp on it and away it goes. Your one-cost stamp can send your letter to your neighbor down the street, or to your friend in Minneapolis, your cousin in Wisconsin, or your old college roommate who now lives in California or Florida. Same cost, one stamp, no matter where it goes.

Not true for newspapers. We get charged a cost for local area delivery, then an increasing cost for the further away from our county that we send them. There are nearly a dozen postal zones all with different rates.

Then the size (weight) of each newspaper determines the rate as well. Some have inserts in them, some do not.

Then the kicker is that we get charged more for the ads in each issue and less for the news space portion of the newspaper.

All of these different costs have to be figured and then put on different complicated forms and taken to the post office each week. And, we need to have enough money in a trust fund at the P.O. before we take the papers to be mailed, or even know how much the cost will be.

One more thing. Our newspapers cannot be more than 75 percent advertising 50 percent of the time during each year. Most newspapers do not get close to that, but a few, that have more ads than news, have to watch that. And we have to figure it every week.

I have people ask me how much it actually costs us to send them a copy of the Faribault County Register each week. I tell them I don’t really know, and then I try and explain why I don’t know. It depends on where they live, how big the paper is that week, how much of it is advertising and, well, now you understand why I can’t just say it is $1 a week.

Now for the hate part of this story.

The postal system used to work pretty well and be at a reasonable cost. Now they raise our rate for newspapers sometimes more than once a year, and the service seems to get a little worse.

I have to say, we get good delivery service out of our local post offices, but some complaints from our far away subscribers quite often.

I see it myself. I get the Steele County Times out of Blooming Prairie. It is a weekly newspaper but I received three copies of it in one week. I got their Feb. 28 edition on Monday, their Feb. 18 issue on Wednesday and their March 4 paper on Friday, March 6.

I am betting you have some similar stories about not just when you get the Register in the mail, but your other mail as well.

Again, I wish the whole postal system worked as well and as efficiently as our local post office staff in our small towns, like Blue Earth.

And, once again, thanks for reading us. No matter what day of the week you get the paper.