Sarah Haas, Peak to Peak.   Living along the Peak-to-Peak means living at a distance from retail. On the casual end of the spectrum it means late night snack cravings must be fulfilled by the contents of your cupboard and, at the extreme, that the pantry will have to hold you over during a week-long blizzard. On the day-to-day, it means that errands have to be consolidated into epic shopping sprees encompassing everything from extra containers of gas, to dog food, to anything you might need in bulk at Costco. Or, you could shop on Amazon where a world of retail is available at the tip of your two-day-free-shipping fingertips.

Of course, this comes at a cost to local vendors and so the decision to buy kibble from Amazon comes at the moral cost of not supporting local businesses. In many a rural area, local retailers have already lost this battle, a large-scale demise being dubbed “the retail apocalypse.” So far though, Nederland businesses have survived the threat posed by e-commerce and, with more than 40 percent of Amazon fulfillment happening through USPS, the Post Office here has thrived, especially since last year when it began fulfilling the “last mile” on Amazon deliveries.

One of the few places in town that’s open 24 hours a day, Post Office staffers trickle in during the wee hours of the morning to meet the Amazon trucks and sort them into daily deliveries. They also sort through regular mail and, six days a week, open their desk to fulfill the shipping needs of locals. You might think this boils down to merely shipping and receiving, but we all know it means more - it means being the glue of the community. It means knowing your name, watching you package up a doll for your niece’s birthday. It means saying hello when you walk in the door.

Gregory Fredyl wagers that’s probably how you know him, as that friendly guy, “Greg the post office custodian.” That or as Marsha’s husband (yes, Marsha of Pinecliffe Post Office fame) because, of the two, she’s the talkative one and he the one who prefers to keep to himself. He spent most of his career behind a computer, “a techie” working for most of the big companies in Boulder and beyond. But his roots are in retail and so he’ll always offer a “hi” and a “how ya doin’” to any person that passes his way.

Born in Memphis and raised in Michigan, Greg’s grandfather was a tailor, a trade his parents turned into a dry cleaning/women’s and menswear business. Greg and his two younger brothers dutifully worked for the family’s stores, although “work” is my word not his, his description centered around playing and watching TV in the back of the store.

Nonetheless Greg is a hard worker and he’s done just about everything there is to do: welding, construction, fixing cars, building houses, maintaining a fleet of trucks and, naturally, spending 20 plus years behind a desk in the technology sector. He’s been at the Post Office for a little over a year, a half time job he got, more or less, out of necessity.

“Health insurance,” he says, simply. “It’s expensive.”

He likes the job and he says he has free reign over what he does and how he does it and, for the most part, this is what he’s thinking about while he works. Sorting through recycling, he’ll look at the window and notice the streaks, a task for the next sunny week. Then he’ll look through the glass and up to the swallow’s mud nests.

“They’re still here,” he says, looking up through the sun at the muddy caves hanging from the eave. As migratory birds, they’re dwellings are federally protected, so Greg watches over them, a sort of ad hoc steward. “They make a muddy mess when they fall, which gets tracked in here, but I like ‘em, the swallows. They’re worth the extra work. In the spring you can watch them fly back and forth from the lake with little beak fulls of mud. They are master engineers.”

As a guy who’s currently building his own house, albeit “slowly and step-by-step,” he means that last compliment sincerely, and as he talks about the struggles of his one-man construction team, “I’m still figuring out how to hold up a long board and nail it into place at the same time,” I wonder if he’d rather build a house with mouthfuls of mud instead. I doubt it.

Greg’s the kind of guy who seems glad that his activities take up his time, for what else is time for? Counting elk that walk past his Pinecliffe door? Sure. Rescuing and raising nine German shepherds? Of course. Counting the years he’s spent with his wife? (Thirty six, that figure the most important of all). When he says it, he stops sweeping and looks me straight in the eye.
“Life is for taking care of my wife and spending time with her,” he says. He starts sweeping again. Time to get back to work, but this time, with a big smile on his face.

The smile is right at home on his face and, reserved as he may be, he seems most like himself when he’s laughing, which he does easily and often. It’s not surprising, considering his last name, the German Freydl, translates to peace, friendship and joy. It’s a name so fitting it makes me think we ought to trade in the moniker “Greg the custodian” for, simply, Greg Fredyl.
Mountain Folk Tales is a weekly column about locals living along the Peak-to-Peak. To suggest someone for a profile please email Sarah at mountainfolktales@gmail.com.

(Originally published in the October 25, 2018, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)