NEW SALEM – Wendy Flanders can expect her retirement to arrive in eight business days.

Following 40 years on the contracted New Salem route, the letter carrier is hanging up her mailbag for good on Sept. 30 and retiring from the Orange Post Office.

“Almost all my family members worked there,” she said on Monday. “So they told me when this route was up [for grabs] and I put in for it and I got it. It was great because while my kids were young I could get home before they got home from school.”

Flanders took over the route as a 29-year-old mother of four. She works six days a week, with about 225 stops in New Salem while also delivering to a sliver of Orange as well. New Salem’s rural, winding roads can be challenging in the snow, but Flanders said she could always call the town’s highway superintendent if she got stuck.

“And in the summer it’s cooler up here than it is in Orange,” she said. “The weather is good up here.”

Flanders, who lives in Orange, said she plans to slow down and relax in retirement and do some traveling, including a trip to Niagara Falls.

Mandy Richtell, the postmaster in Orange, talked about how Flanders is popular among coworkers and will be sorely missed.

“She comes in every day, she’s always smiling. She makes a lot of funny jokes and has a great attitude,” she said. “Everybody here knows Wendy. Everybody here knows her and enjoys her when she’s here.”

Richtell mentioned a lot of work goes on behind the scenes at a post office, as carriers have to sort the mail to be delivered on their routes.

“There’s a lot of that goes into the mail that I think people don’t realize,” she said. “I know Wendy goes above and beyond a lot. She’s so knowledgeable about her people [on her route].”

Richtell said someone has already purchased the New Salem route and will take over the job on Oct. 1. She said that as far as she knows New Salem has never had its own mail service.

Flanders said interacting with her customers, who have always treated her with kindness and respect, will be the aspect of the job she misses the most.

She added that the job entailed driving her own dinged-up Honda CRV, which as of Monday had 256,000 miles on it.

Reach Domenic Poli at: dpoli@recorder.com or 413-930-4120.