She started in a Nash Rambler, way back in 1961.

Gas was 31 cents per gallon.

The road between Athens and Skowhegan was narrow. When snow was plowed and piled on the roadside, it towered over cars. Sometimes, she had to travel in one-way traffic because the snow constricted the road even further.

Last week, after 47 years, 203,000 trips and 1 million miles, 76-year-old Greta Hayden of Athens began her well-deserved retirement from her job ferrying mail between Athens and Skowhegan six days a week.

"I figured if I signed another four-year contract I'd be 80 and I've been tied down for 47 years so I decided I'd like to have a little bit of time that if I just wanted to go visit my kids, I wouldn't have to get somebody to haul my mail," said Hayden, as if she had to explain why she was finally stopping.

It would be easy and appropriate to say, "They don't make 'em like that any more," and that's just what Athens Post-master Sue Molley said at one of two celebrations of Hayden's long service.

What's harder to do is understand what that means.

Not only are there fewer and fewer people who would devote themselves to a job for the better part of half a century, but there are fewer jobs you can hold for almost half a century, too.

So with the departure of the indomitable Hayden, we lose something other than simply her fine service.

We lose a connection to another time, when a job was a job for life and when you always saw the same faces as you made your way through the day. Call it nostalgia -- or call it the good old days. Whatever it is, we'll miss it, and we'll miss Mrs. Greta Hayden.