The other day, I walked into the Burton branch of our estimable island post office system, rang the quaint little bell on the counter in order to summon a post-person and waited. The usual postmistress, if that is the right term, was on vacation, and my first thought was: “Wait! They get vacations? What about ‘Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night’… etc?”

I rang the bell again, and eventually a nice lady came around from behind the post boxes she was stuffing with, as near as I could tell, nothing more than circulars from various grocery stores and catalogues from L.L. Bean.

“Can I help you?” she asked. In my head, I immediately heard my late grammar Nazi mother saying, “I don’t know, CAN you?” But I knew the woman really meant MAY I, and did not correct her. People, I have learned, do not take kindly to grammar correction. I never did, either. I wish my dead mother would shut up; she’s not helping.

“I’d like a book of first-class stamps, please,” I said finally.

“I’m sorry, but we have no stamps.”

The post office has no stamps.

Now I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking that other than slapping stamps on things and shipping them off somewhere, there’s not much a post office has to do, you know, other than deliver mail which, of course, already has stamps on it since it comes from someplace far more advanced, technologically, than our beloved island.

I am seldom speechless, but this stopped me cold: a post office with no stamps. I mean, you know, think about this: They keep raising the price of first-class stamps, what, weekly? Is the problem that they can’t print them fast enough? Is the ferry authority blocking stamp shipments? Has the National Security Agency, in its wisdom, decided mail from this somewhat left-of-center island is seditious and dangerous? No postal service for those suspect people at the food bank who give away actual free food! Those otherwise nice people at Granny’s almost giving away clothing to people in need? No mail! Island homeopaths bypassing the medical/industrial complex and threatening its ruin? Anti-American! Island gardeners and other food artisans (not to mention wineries) aimed at putting IGA and the Thriftway out of business? Danger to the American way at every turn! Let’s curtail their mail!

But I digress. Let’s return to the matter of the postal service. And let’s begin by saying that the employees at our two post office branches work long and hard to meet our postal needs, which is no easy task when they have, you know, no stamps. Think of how often they can only shrug their shoulders and apologize. It must be humiliating.

But there’s something else about this whole postal game which has troubled me for some time: It has to do with street delivery versus post office boxes. As you know, the United States Postal Service will deliver mail to your roadside mailbox (unless someone’s knocked it over already) for free — this assumes, of course, that the mail has stamps on it, which it won’t if it’s from a Vashon neighbor. The USPS uses its own vehicles, its own paid drivers and its own gasoline to bring your mail almost to your door. Gratis.

Now, let’s say you have a box inside an actual post office in town or in Burton. You go to the post office in your own car, on your own time, burning your own gasoline, to pick up your already paid-for mail, right? The post office doesn’t have to do anything about delivery: No car, no driver, no cost at all. And yet, you have to pay them an annual fee for them to do pretty much nothing with your mail except stuff it in a slot, which takes seconds.

How does this make sense? Is it any wonder they don’t have stamps to sell?

— Will North is an island novelist. His latest book, “Too Clever By Half,” the second in his Davies & West mystery series, will be available in two months. For the first in the series, check out “Harm None” at the Vashon Bookshop.