Anchorage Daily News

At 10 a.m. a week before Christmas Eve, the doors to the Midtown post office slide open and customers file in. A lot of customers.

Within minutes, a line extends to the hallway as people in serious winter coats clutch handfuls of letters and boxes of various sizes and shapes. Most of the boxes are bland cardboard, but some have oranges or grapes dancing over the sides, and a few hearty ones are sealed with duct tape. One or two are gift-wrapped, a foolish gesture since the wrapping most likely will arrive worse for the wear.

Still, it's hard not to admire the work that went into these packages, as if what is inside is so important it must be advertised to the world.

"See?" they seem to say. "See how bright and festive I am. Don't you feel better just looking at me?"

FACE OF AN ARMY

It's hard not to feel festive after spending time with Joey McIntyre. The 31-year post office veteran can't stop singing. He belts out Christmas songs at the drop of a package, though at other times of the year he swings over to Bobby Vinton or Dean Martin.

He's the kind of guy who knows exactly what to say to people angry about the wait or ready to complain about that "fragile" package that arrived in Toledo, Ohio, in pieces. He can say just those few words that make you feel not like a customer but someone with a face and history. Someone who matters.

"I'll be home for Christmas," he sings to an elderly woman in a beige coat that has seen better days. She wears a silver reindeer on her collar, the kind of pin so gaudy and sparkly you just know it was sent by a grandchild.

"Ah, what do we have here?" McIntyre holds up a package wrapped in greenish paper that gives it an underwater glow. The woman is nervous about her package getting lost in the mail, and when McIntyre suggests insurance, she agrees and opens her purse. Then she changes her mind. Then she agrees again. Finally she decides that she really doesn't need the insurance after all. McIntyre laughs and takes it in stride.

"Only in my dreams," he sings, and the woman flashes him a lipstick-flecked smile before closing her purse and bustling out the door.

McIntyre hasn't always serenaded customers in the Midtown post office. He used to live in Palm Springs, Calif., until he got fed up with the heat and decided to move somewhere that "wasn't so awful hot." He arrived in Kodiak in 1975 and worked the canneries for a couple of months before starting over at the Kodiak post office. He transferred to Anchorage in 1984 and married around the same time; he has three children ranging in age from 14 to 21.

"I'm going to be a grandfather soon," he brags to a customer with a small child. "A first-time grandpa." He is silent for a moment, as if considering the seriousness of this birth. Then a young man in a baseball hat steps up to the window, and McIntyre blares out a song. The man steps back, as if startled, and finally leans forward and laughs.

"Ah," McIntyre says, stamping the young man's package with a Priority sticker, "ah, that Nat King Cole!"

TRY A LITTLE MAGIC

During the only morning lull, McIntyre slips on a sweater that looks a lot like the one Mr. Rogers used to wear and shows off some of his tricks. He's a bona fide magician who sometimes works the stage with Don Russell at Tony Roma's magic nights.

The name tag propped up at his window says "Mr. Magic" on it, with a magic hat and wand. In smaller letters and pushed off to the side, as if it's of lesser importance, is the U.S. Postal Service logo.

McIntyre's hands move quickly and deftly, fingers flashing around coins and small yellow balls that disappear and reappear in his pockets or on top of his desk or even next to his ear. He takes his magic seriously and is a member of Alaska Magicians and the International Magicians.

"That's what I'm going to do when I retire," he laughs, pulling a ball out of his sleeve.

Then he notices a man standing sullenly at his window, holding an ominous-looking envelope addressed to the IRS. McIntyre insures the letter, chatting about the holidays and how he can't even find the time to get to the post office to mail his own packages, but the man refuses to crack a smile. When he hands McIntyre his credit card, it disappears in McIntyre's palm.

"Oops, where did it go?" Mc Intyre pulls it out of his pocket and then loses it in his other hand. The man laughs, and McIntyre brings out his yellow balls and shows him other tricks. A few people in the back of the line shuffle impatiently, but McIntyre ignores them and turns one ball into two and then three.

"Ah, holiday magic," he says. The man picks up his hat and turns to leave, his lips moving faintly -- could it be possible that he's singing along with the Christmas songs on the radio?

Through the morning, the line in the post office lobby lengthens and shortens, and just when you think it's finally going to die down, the door opens and more people rush in, some holding packages as high as their heads.

Throughout it all, McIntyre and the other workers remain cheerful and upbeat. And if they start to look a little frayed as the day goes on, if their collars slump a bit, if the starch falls out of their shirts, who can blame them, really.

Think of it, all those packages, and behind them, the faces of the people who will receive them: elderly relatives, small children, a father with thick, veined hands that shake slightly as he fumbles with the thick tape.

HOME AGAIN

In the back of the post office, things are more hushed. The overhead lights give the illusion of being underground, and there is a feeling of enclosed safety, as if you have suddenly found yourself among members of an ant colony.

Everyone has serious yet good-natured expressions on their faces, working quietly and then scurrying from corners and hallways to empty bins, file letters and push huge crates toward the loading area.

A carefully orchestrated rhythm exists behind all that shuffling, and it goes something like this. After receiving letters and packages, the front-house postal workers place them in their designated bins.

There are bins for metered letters, flat letters, flat letters in large envelopes and not-so-flat letters in large envelopes. The same goes for the packages, which are placed in metal crates labeled for staying in Alaska, for "slow" mail, priority, large packages and small.

When the bins and crates are full, they are bustled off to the back, emptied into larger bins and stacked with more boxes until they are finally loaded on a large truck and sent off to the airport post office. Once there, they are sorted and shipped on trucks and planes until they end up at Aunt Betty's or Grandpa George's or that sister who always knits you lumpy scarves even though you tell her that you need anything, anything at all, but another scarf.

And those letters! Hundreds, no thousands, pouring out of bins at the blink of the eye, the bright holiday envelopes winking mischievously among the stern white credit card payments and the official, metered letters from school districts and dentist offices. All those letters here one minute and gone the next.

It's mind-boggling, it's overwhelming, it makes one feel small and insignificant and terribly lonely. Yet, still hopeful. Because that one letter, that one card you've been waiting for could, this very moment, be headed toward your mailbox.

That card from a friend you haven't heard from in years, a mother who has been doing poorly but is still hanging in there, a child who left in a huff and now regrets his choice. It could be there tonight, tomorrow or the next day in a cheerful red, green or blue envelope: a hope, a good laugh, the words that will change your life forever.

It's scary, immense and terribly comforting to know that in this mixed-up, crazy world, you can send a card or package from Anchorage and it will travel from bin to crate, truck to plane to truck again before finally appearing in a dented mailbox on a back road in Knoxville, Tenn., or Ashton or Virginia Beach, Va. That a part of you can finally make it home again.