ODDLY ENOUGH

July 1, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

ODDLY ENOUGH

Oldest US postal worker in California retires at 95

REDLANDS, Calif.

It wasn’t snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night that stopped Chester Arthur Reed from his appointed round. The mail handler just felt it was time to call it quits at age 95.

Reed retired Wednesday as the nation’s oldest postal worker, ending a career without taking a single sick day. It’s a feat he attributes to a healthy diet of watermelon, alkaline water and an onion sandwich with mayo every day.

Despite being partially deaf and walking with a stoop, Reed has worked for more years than many of his co-workers have been alive and has accrued 3,856 hours — nearly two years — of sick leave for not missing a shift in 37 years.

Reed has been a U.S. Postal Service mail handler and forklift operator since he was hired in 1973, making $4 an hour. He hit the $25-an-hour ceiling about 10 years ago. He worked the 2:30- to-11 p.m. shift regularly and logged more than 12 hours some days.

He and his 59-year-old son, Richard, visit a continent each year, recently marking their fifth. He is planning another trip that will include Moscow, Helsinki and Dublin, and a second parasailing adventure in Rio de Janeiro.

Reed was born in 1914 and grew up in St. Clairsville, Ohio, the son of an auto mechanic and a housewife. After high school, he worked on Ford Model Ts in his dad’s shop. In 1944, Reed met his wife, Iva Katherine, a dance instructor, on the dance floor and enlisted in the Air Force three years later at age 33.

He retired from active service as a sergeant in 1972. He said he heard the post office was hiring, so he went in for an interview and was hired on the spot.

Monroe’s X-rays fetch $45K

LOS ANGELES

The apparently endless market for images of Marilyn Monroe now extends to inside the bombshell’s body. A set of three Monroe chest X-rays from a 1954 hospital visit sold Sunday for $45,000 at the Hollywood Legends auction at Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino in Las Vegas.

Julien’s Auctions, which sold the X-rays, estimated they would fetch only about $3,000.

Other Monroe-abilia sold included a chair from her last photo shoot that went for $35,000.

The auction included items from other actresses, including a pair of earrings worn by Kate Winslet in “Titanic” that sold for $25,000 and a dress Audrey Hepburn wore when she starred opposite Fred Astaire in the musical “Funny Face” that fetched $56,250.

Associated Press