ON TIME AND HONORABLE

Reliability is probably the greatest thing you can contribute to society. Seriously, if you want to be respected, be reliable. And if you want a reputation that goes down for generations—well, reliability will set that foundation. Because when you’re reliable, people know what to expect of you. And how the hell can somebody start spreading the legend of you as a person if you’re never around to create that legend in the first place? They can’t—so stop canceling plans.

My point: In a world growing ever more consumed with social media and instant gratification, everybody wants to be somebody, everyone wants to be well known, but nobody wants to actually be relied upon. And what’s more reliable than the mail? Well, traditionally speaking. Again, like other things, the mail ain’t what it used to be. But maybe that’s only because the United States Postal Service no longer employs individuals like Mary Fields, a.k.a. Stagecoach Mary.

At the age of sixty-three, Mary tried out to become a contracted postal carrier for a Star Route (a term used for low-population routes assigned to contractors) in rural-ass Montana, departing from the town of Cascade. She got the gig because her proficiency in horse hitching was the quickest of all who auditioned. Now, although her route was far too difficult to allow for a stagecoach to be used, she got the nickname Stagecoach Mary because she was just as reliable as the mail teams with the easier routes that could be completed by stagecoach. In other words, Mary and her trusted mule, Moses, were fucking badasses.

In addition to her reliable reputation, Mary was popular with the Native American tribes of the area (and the townsfolk) for her whiskey-drinking, foulmouthed demeanor. So when Montana passed a law banning women from saloons, Mary was granted an exception by the mayor himself—making her not only the FIRST African American woman to work for the postal service but also the ONLY woman in Montana legally allowed to get publicly wasted. Seriously, people fucking loved Mary; she was asked to babysit, given free meals at local restaurants, and treated like the coolest grandmother anyone could ask for.

Then in 1903, at the age of seventy-one—after eight years of handling the mail for one of Montana’s toughest letter-bearing areas—Mary retired from her postal role. She died on December 5, 1914, and her funeral set the town record for the largest attendance ever. (Something tells me the following day was probably the town’s most hungover day ever as well.)

You see, reliability is the basis of the best reputations. And it’s never too late to stop being a flake and start being fucking great.