Kasson postmaster enjoys people he meets

Barry Erichsen lived in Rochester, with a brother and sister, until the third grade. The family moved to Kasson in 1971 when his dad, Erv, became the Kasson police chief. A 1980 KM graduate, Barry said he tried basketball in Junior high but was not really involved with school activities. 
He said that KM Grad Greg Miller, who worked with plays for many years at the Rochester Civic Theater, got him to be part of a lip sync fundraiser concert at school with KISS music since he has always enjoyed listening to music.
When his dad started a dry cleaning service in Rochester, Barry worked for him from 1974 to 1989. He then was employed with Telex in Rochester for the next 10 years working with customers getting the proper fit for their hearing aids.
Working for the Post Office
He was married in 1989 to Dwyn and she worked as a LPN at Samaritan Bethany in Rochester for over 20 years. She encouraged him to sign up for the Post Office exam in 1999 which he did. He passed the exam and looked for possible places with an opening.  
A position was available in Byron for a carrier and an office position.  When the postmaster asked if he was a hunter and Barry said he wasn’t, he was told that was good as he would be available when the hunting season is on. He was also looking for someone that had no prior postal experience as he then wouldn’t need to retrain someone with some bad habits and Barry fit that agenda also.
Barry remembers fun memories going along to the Post Office in Jackson, with his grandfather when he would pick up his mail and they would talk to the Postmaster and people there. He said he hopes to have a similar impact with a positive experience on someone’s children or grandchildren as he did as a young boy, when they come to the Kasson Post Office.
Barry said he was ready to get out of Kasson when he was younger and head for the “bright lights” in a bigger city. His wife, had lived in several different places growing up but now lived in Rochester, and was really impressed with the community so they moved to Kasson in 1993.
Barry worked at the Byron Post Office for five years when a position became available in Kasson. At that time the Post Office was located at 2nd Avenue and Main Street.  When the Mantorville routes were transferred to Kasson, work space became a real issue with this building. When Kwik Trip moved south of Highway 14 and Burger King moved to that building, the Post Office then relocated to their present location. This move gave them much more needed work space to operate. The Postal Service only owns 3,600 offices while 28,000 are leased which is the case in Kasson.  
People shopping more and more on line has changed the work load for the Post Office especially with the activity of Amazon, Fed Ex, Speedy and other package deliveries they now handle. Barry said “we thought we were busy when we handled 1,000 packages” but during the Christmas season they would process up to 2,500 on a daily basis.  Just this week it seemed like a light day when they processed 1,200 packages at the Kasson Post Office, he said.
Barry said it seems people are more willing to spend a little more time talking at the front desk when mailing parcels as they don’t get to see as many people as they were used to before the virus situation hit this year.
Choosing stamps
He said he does have a choice when selecting stamps they carry for sale and tries to pick out those Kasson residents will be more likely to buy.  He mentioned that he always gives the same “employee discount” to anyone buying stamps as he receives (which is the same face value). In this “doom and gloom” time it is still good for people to laugh. Barry does have a very avid stamp collector in Kasson so he makes an effort to find stamps they are looking for.  
When he looks out the north window from the front desk area he sees the “Kasson Police” sign hanging outside of the police station. This is the one that used to hang on the former location outside the police station when it was in the basement of City Hall on Main street when his dad was police chief.
Something that people may or not be aware is they handle the mail for Mantorville and Dodge Center.  When mailing letters to those communities, if you can give them to the front desk, it will avoid being sent to the cities so will speed up the delivery time.
It’s not just Kasson mail
Barry said there are 25 full and part time employees working out of the Kasson office with eight rural delivery routes.  They use six of the white postal trucks for mail delivery in the community for three city routes while rural carriers use their own vehicles. They will get calls wondering why their mail has been delivered so late some days and sometimes there may be vehicle mechanical problems or they are short staffed because of illness.  
Do you really think the mail carriers like being out after dark, especially in the winter, delivering mail if they didn’t have to, he said. He feels the people he works with are like family members to him and his goal is to treat people coming to the post office with respect.
His wife now works at a Mayo Health facility in Faribault. Their two children are KM grads and were both involved in basketball and track so they attended many sports activities during that time. Their daughter, Kaeley and family now live in Kasson while Brandon made the move to Rochester. They have one grandchild and one more on the way.  
He said when their son was growing up he would mark the heights on a wall and he would tell him at night “good night big guy.”  When his son finally passed dad’s height mark on the wall, Brandon said to him, “good night little guy!”
Collecting beer memorabilia and cars
Barry said he collects beer signs and other old beer items such as Grain Belt and other brands. He said Hamm’s beer items (the Hamm’s bear was a well-known in TV ads) are more expensive so he avoids them. He also collects items such as old metal coolers and old brass table fans when he can find them.   He enjoys going to auctions to find some of these treasures as they might be more reasonable in price than at flea markets.  
Barry said he just likes to tinker with fixing some of these “treasures” he has around.
Another one of his passions is old cars. He has a 1965 Chevrolet Corvair (the Corvair was the rear engine car, made for 9 years, that Ralph Nader mentioned in his 1965 book “Unsafe at Any Speed”).  Included in his collection: 1963 Chevy Impala 4 door, 1982 Corvette, a “very long” 1976 Cadillac, and a 1934 Chevy coupe that his great grandfather from Jackson, bought new. 
The Erichsen’s really enjoy attending music concerts and the first concert he ever attended was a 1978 Grateful Dead concert and he even has a live CD recording of that event. Since his wife does not like to fly, they really enjoy driving to destinations across the country as they are a good traveling team. Barry said when taking trips with their parents while growing up, they would end up waiting in the car for a while as their dad really enjoyed a good conversation with people at any stop.
Barry said he tries to make decisions in his life that will make his family proud and even decisions that he hopes would make his parents proud.  Even though at one time Barry wanted to get out of Kasson, he has been very pleased that his wife made the good choice to return to this community!
 
 
Photo: Barry Erichsen keeps the mail flowing smoothly as postmaster in Kasson.