Nahant’s friendly neighborhood mailman has walked his last route

NAHANT – Dogs may be the mortal foe of most mail carriers, but they were nothing to Nahant mailman Al Swanson, who retired from his town postal route last week.”I trained dogs in the military,” Swanson explained. “I’ll just be nice to them, talk to them, all you have to do is be nice to them.”It’s a philosophy that Swanson applied equally to the humans on his Bass Pointe route.”He’s not only a mailman, but a friend,” said resident Jim Walton. “He has nice things to say about everyone and everybody has nice things to say about him.”Swanson retired last week after more than 11 years delivering mail to the Bass Point neighborhood on the Nahant Four Route.It was a pretty choice assignment, Swanson said.Resident Tom Luftis has a cup of iced tea waiting for Swanson when he arrives every day around 2:15 p.m.Swanson chats sports with Sylvia Belkin each day. He said he doesn’t have to often dodge traffic. He checks up on elderly clients, makes sure that car lights are turned off and estimates that he’s been inside almost every house along his route, which gives him 12 miles to walk each day.It takes him four to six hours to complete.Swanson took the post office test looking for a stable and active job after being laid off from General Electric in 1987.”It was a job I knew I would never be laid off from and I like to keep busy,” Swanson said. “One thing the post office does is keep you busy.”Swanson, who lives in Derry, N.H., carried mail in Saugus for four and a half years, then spent nine years in Lynn, a city he said was distinguished by the large number of homes with steps. When he arrived in Nahant, he knew it would be his last assignment.”Once I got this route, I knew I was going to retire from it,” he said. “It’s nice to walk along the ocean each day. It’s even nicer that there are so many nice people up here.”It’s good that Swanson likes them, because Luftis said that Swanson keeps him up-to-date on all the town news.Now Luftis and other residents said they don’t know what they’ll do without Swanson.”I know he keeps an eye on all us older folks and makes sure we’re okay,” said Belkin. “He better visit, that way we can keep track of him and he can keep track of us.”