Before Steve Parratt rolls up to your house in his trademark brown UPS truck, you might hear Led Zeppelin blaring through the sliding side door, or the animated chatter of sports radio.
Metal rock and sports talk are the soundtrack of the delivery route Mr. Parratt has been driving in Point Reyes Station and Inverness for nearly 13 years now—the capstone of a 29-year UPS career that began in April 1997 and will end this spring.
He’s looking forward to playing more golf and taking road trips with his wife, Catherine, but he’ll miss the people who count on his deliveries every week.
“Working out here in a small town, you get to know everybody,” he said. “I feel very connected to the community. I get to see the same people every day, which is great, you know. I enjoy that.”
Mr. Parratt, an athletic 6-foot-1, speaks with traces of his native British accent, but it has morphed into something more American over the years. He moved to New Hampshire with his family when he was 10 years old and ventured off to California on his own when he was 24.
He began his working life making yogurt and cheese. “Then I got married,” he said. “And my wife said I needed to get something solid, so I ended up at UPS.”
The company has a strong union, in which seniority is everything. Those who have served longest can bid on routes as they open; junior drivers take what they can get—typically urban routes with more stops and more traffic.
“We call them the young man’s routes, because they’re just a lot of bulk and a lot of pickups,” he said. “You empty the truck, you fill the truck. I was looking to get a route that was a little bit more country.”
Driving to the outer fringes of the seashore—where he once got stuck behind a fallen tree while returning from Pierce Point—fit the bill. When the Point Reyes route opened, he took it.
The customers with whom he’s become friendly over the years will miss him. One of them even took out a series of advertisements in the Light this month to express her gratitude.
“STEVE, OUR UPS DRIVER, IS RETIRING!” the ad reads. “Look for his truck the week of Feb. 23. Let’s surprise him! Hang a sign, a poster or a note to wish him well!”
The author of the tribute told the Light that she wished to remain anonymous, like Deep Throat. “I don’t need the spotlight on me,” she said. “It’s all about Steve.”
She praised him for his reliable good cheer and his discretion.
“Even when it’s dumping rain, and it’s coming down sideways, he’s at the door, handing me my package,” she said. “He knows the inner workings of everything out here. He knows when everyone’s on vacation. He knows when someone has become ill or injured. He literally knows the secrets of West Marin.”
And he keeps them.
His secret admirer wanted to make sure that Mr. Parratt didn’t slip out of town unnoticed. “By the time people realize he’s retired and gone, they won’t be able to show him the appreciation that he truly deserves,” she said.
Of all the businesses in town, none has received more packages from Mr. Parratt than Point Reyes Books. In the last year and a half, ever since UPS reduced West Marin deliveries to just three days a week, Mr. Parratt has done whatever he could to ease the resulting inconvenience.
“I’m sad we’re losing Steve,” said Stephen Sparks, co-owner of the shop, where each year Mr. Parratt delivers up to 70,000 books weighing tens of thousands of pounds.
“Through the various changes UPS has implemented, many of which seem designed to benefit their shareholders over their customers or employees, Steve has been a constant,” Mr. Sparks said. “He knows this place and its people, and he can back a truck up along those one-way dirt roads in Inverness.”
For folks who work in town, Mr. Parratt will sometimes deliver packages to their workplace rather than leave them unattended at their home.
“He pays attention,” said Miguel Kuntz, the master curator of the West Marin Culture Shop. “He’s not just ramming his way through his day to get to the end. He’s taking care of small-town needs. It’s a little different out here, and I think he recognizes that.”
If Mr. Parratt sits down at Toby’s, as he did for a conversation with the Light last week, half the people who walk by greet him by name. Even the dogs stop to say hello.
“Hi, Stella!” he said to one pup straining on her leash to get near him.
He pulled a treat from his pocket. The snacks are a necessary trick of the trade, something he learned early on when a nasty bulldog chomped on his hand, leaving a wound that required a few stitches.
Mr. Parratt has other battle scars, one of them visible on his left leg. Early in his career, he broke his femur, which apparently snapped from the cumulative strain of carrying so many boxes.
He’d been feeling some pain in his leg for a couple of weeks and thought he had injured his knee. The break happened when he was jumping back into the truck on a rural road on the outskirts of Novato.
He couldn’t get to the bulky old Nokia phone he had stashed in a backpack in the rear of his truck. It took some persuading to get a skeptical woman walking by to clamber aboard and get the phone so he could call for help.
“I was out of work for seven months,” he said. “I’ve got a big scar there and a metal plate in my leg.”
The scar peeks out from beneath his brown UPS-issued shorts, part of the uniform he wears rain or shine, in summer, spring, fall and winter.
“A lot of people make jokes about that,” he said. “There are drivers who wear long pants, but I’ve never found the need. On a rainy day, if your pants get wet, you’re wet all day.”
Mr. Parratt’s predecessor on the route, John Martinson, drove the same roads for many years. “You’re the new John,” people would say when Mr. Parratt began.
Soon, the next guy will hear a similar refrain: “You’re the new Steve.”