As the U.S. postal system continues its uncomfortable passage into obsolescence, a look back at Charles Kuralt’s 1981 report about a Gap, Pennsylvania, postal worker with a challenging route.

About Kuralt’s shocking secret life, which surfaced after his death, from Salon: “Charles Kuralt, CBS’s folksy ‘On the Road’ correspondent, spent years exploring America’s out-of-the-way places in search of oddball stories. But the best story may have been the one he never told.

For 29 years, until his death in 1997, he apparently kept a mistress and maintained a second family. The celebrated journalist was, in effect, husband and father to them, as well as breadwinner, friend and hero.

While his wife remained at their home in the concrete canyons of New York City, he nurtured his secret life along a rushing trout stream in Montana.

None of this would come out, however, until after his death, when his mistress, Patricia Elizabeth Shannon, sued to get a Montana retreat he promised her. Montana’s Supreme Court ruled last month that the woman is entitled to a trial on her claim.”