A Favorite Long Quote

Some quotes I love are too lengthy to be appended to my regular entries, so I will be giving them their own space in which to stretch and preen...

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...and there was nothing in the world to do but wait for the mailman to come, and pray that he wouldn't. Mama said the postmen in Neely had never worn neckties until the war, had never worn their gray wool uniforms with stripes down the trouserlegs, had never worn their postal-issue caps, had never been so severe and proper until the war came along to make them extraordinarily significant. They would knock on doors and out would come mothers and wives and sisters already on the raw edge of agony, and the postman would extend the notice towards them...and mama said nobody who got one ever opened it right off, but clutched it and bent it and worked it through their fingers and never neglected to say "thank you." Kissing the axe, Daddy called it. T.R. Pearson - "A Short History of a Small Place"
Chosen because it affected me emotionally, how war can impact what would otherwise be a normal, everyday interaction we all experience - receiving mail from the mailman. I was touched by the small but significant gesture of how the postmen chose to dress themselves to reflect the gravity of their job. And "kissing the axe" is such a juicy final wallop to the end of the thought. This author captures so many wonderful moments of life in this book using long, luxurious, lazy sentences. I need to reread it.