After 45 Years, a Mailman\'s Final Rounds on Ninth Avenue

Robert Caplin for The New York Times Al Gibson crossing Ninth Avenue on one of his last workdays before ending his 45 years of delivering mail in Hell’s Kitchen.

King Xerxes’ messengers in Persia, the ancient ones who inspired the famous line about what neither snow, rain nor heat could stop, had their horses. Al Gibson, who is nearing the swift completion of a 45-year career as a mail carrier in Hell’s Kitchen, has his horn.

It is a clown’s horn attached to his cart. He honks it as he makes his appointed rounds, letting people know the mail is on the way. He had the older people in the walk-ups on Ninth Avenue in mind hen he taped it to his cart in the 1980s. “This was to keep them from walking down, and there’s no mail,” he said.

Mr. Gibson’s fans along his six blocks of Ninth Avenue â€" and just about everyone in those six blocks is a fan of Mr. Gibson’s, it seems â€" will miss the horn, and him. “He’s a fixture of the neighborhood â€" the mayor, if you will,” said Alan Kaplan, a director of Bra-Tenders, which sells lingerie to the film and theater industry from a suite in the Film Center Building at 630 Ninth Avenue, the centerpiece of Mr. Gibson’s route.

To follow Mr. Gibson through from floor to floor â€" 13 in all, though the top floor is the 14th, because superstition prevailed when the building opened in the 1920s, so there is no 13th â€" is to witness an unusual camaraderie. It is also to hear person after person in office after office ask, “How many more days, 14”

That was on a recent Friday. They all knew it was 14 days, and that aft! er Thursday and a party in a bar across the street, he will be gone.

“Al’s a terrific presence and a larger-than-life guy,” said Lori Rubinstein, executive director of Plasa, a trade association in Suite 609, “but even though he gets in and out of your office very quickly, he still has taken the time to say hello. He doesn’t make you feel like some people do, run in, throw the mail at you and run out. He does it quickly but he has the talent for doing that and still making it a welcome part of your day.”

He has been on Ninth Avenue since the bad old days, but his sunny, tell-no-evil personality has carried him through. Mickey Spillane The Westies “They weren’t on my route,” he said. “They hung out on 10th Avenue.”

He stayed on Ninth Avenue, always sorting the mail in the post office on West 42nd Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues in the early morning, always pushing his cart up the avenue around noon. “It’s a good route,” he said. “A working route.” Henever bid for a route with more prestigious addresses, like Fifth Avenue.

Robert Caplin for The New York Times Mr. Gibson uses a horn to let people on his route know when the mail has arrived.

Parking his cart into the Film Center Building’s Art Deco lobby, he explains his strategy: “Work my way down, floor to floor, door to door.” On the way into each office, he announces himself: “Mailman in the house,” or simply “MAIL-man.”

Jim Markovic, a film editor who has worked in the building since the 1960s, except for a few years at another address, long ago cracked the code that underlies Mr. Gibson’s patter. “He’d say: ‘I got so! me goodie! s for you. You’ll see.’ Or he’d say, ‘The goodies are right here in the bag.’ That meant checks. The other mail, he wouldn’t say anything. He wouldn’t refer to junk mail as junk mail. But you knew if he didn’t say ‘goodies,’ you didn’t get any checks.” (“I always put the checks on the top. That makes everyone happy.”)

It is the noon hour, but Mr. Gibson is going full speed. “Keep moving, do the route, have my lunch period at the end of the day,” he explains.

On the ninth floor, Mr. Gibson encountered the enemy, the FedEx deliverer. Except that they are not enemies.

“U.P.S., DHL, I communicate with all of them,” he said. “If I can help them to get in, I work along with them.”

Mr. Gibson wears the standard letter carrier’s uniform â€" and a pith helmet, even in cold weather. Some tenants have asked about the headgear. “His standard response is, ‘Because it’s a jungle out there,’” said John Kilgore in Suite 307.

But Mr. Gibso’s explanation, on the way to the second floor, was different. “One time, coming around the building, a guy was washing the windows and he missed the hook with the squeegee,” he said. The squeegee â€" heavy, he said, and sharp â€" fell to the pavement. “If I’d been one step farther along,” he said, “boom, that’s it.”

Michael Berkowitz, in Suite 203, had another question: Who will get the horn

The answer is, no one.

“I’m going to take it with me,” Mr. Gibson said. “Too many people want it.”