Bad holiday story

[JB White]

Horrible accident on Christmas Eve. A bus load of caravan illegals who managed to get through at the border. Perhaps 40 to 50 onboard?? Flipped and rolled down an embankment into the woods nearby. A somewhat rural area. Help can be a long time coming when seconds matter. That's frightening.
Many of us stopped our cars and a local crowd gathered. I noticed it was a mostly white but ethnically mixed crowd and some of us were able to extract the driver. That's when somebody down wind smelled the fuel leak.
Driver is an elderly black man who was fine for the most part. Shaken up as expected since he thought he might die there. All he wanted to do was finish his run and be home for the holiday. It was very tricky getting him back up top but we managed. All working in unison to save him. Passing him off carefully like a bucket brigade up the steep side. A couple of truckers administered first aid for minor cuts and bruises while we calmed him down. One local lady even prayed over him in Spanish.
To see so many Americans and future Americans bonding together in a time of need choked me up. Everybody thinking and acting alike. There were still those caravan people trapped inside the bus, but all agreed the fuel smell had gotten much stronger. Emergency services were inundated with pleas for help. Line at the mailbox had to be at least one hundred yards long.

[Sako]

Hey, got to fill them ditches somehow.

[Allen]

Must have been a 15 passenger van to just have 40-50 on board.

[JOHN COOK]

Line at the mailbox had to be at least one hundred yards long.

I am an Old Fart, and I read your post three times. My thought process is still pretty good but I don't understand the above quote. If it's a joke it is in poor taste in my opinion. If not please explain the line at the mailbox. Just a little puzzled.

john

[JB White]

It's a punch line and it's in poor taste John. That's why I posted it as a "bad" story. It's repugnant and in poor taste unless one has a sense of humor leaning towards macabre.

[Mark in Ottawa]

John Cooke: The logic of the story is that the people passing by went to a lot of trouble (all by themselves) to save the American driver but when it came time to save the illegals, they chose the slowest possible means of getting help (the mail), thus ensuring that the illegals would not survive. They could however, say to themselves or anyone else that they did their civic and moral duty by trying to get professionals to help save the illegals. It's not their fault that it took a long time for the help to arrive!

[lyman]

there is another variation about a boat sinking in the Rio, while trying to cross , and the joke teller worried that he may have wasted a stamp when he notified authorities,

[Former Cav]

kind of like this one.
a bus that had 80 seats went over a cliff with 77 politicians (or lawyers) in it.
what a shame, 3 of the seats were empty.