The mail this week brought a thoughtful card from the vet’s office, expressing sympathies for the recent passing of the Head of the Household — and it took Herculean strength not to laugh.

Not at the well-wishes, of course; those were heartfelt and sincere. Rather, my admittedly amused cynicism was roused by the absurd route the card took to reach our mailbox.

The vet’s office, according to the online map I chose to go ogle, is three miles away from our home. A nine-minute drive, if the lights were in our favor. If we didn’t feel like getting in the car, we could make it there in 22 minutes by bicycle — you’re more likely to see a frog riding one — or a 1 hour, 17 minute walk.

(Trust me, if you see me walking for an hour and 17 minutes, there are sand traps and tee boxes involved … and I’m halfway to finishing with an Arnold Palmer.)

The card, though, took at least three days to travel to make that three-mile trip — because, according to the postmark, it had traveled the 545 miles, give or take a detour, while going from Medford to Portland and back.

For those of you doing the math at home … why? Allow me. We’re talking 66 hours or so on a bicycle and 208 by foot — after which, frankly, something far stronger than a lemonade-iced tea combo would be needed to commemorate the completion of the trip.

All of which is a way of saying that I don’t need to tell you what USPS’s “Delivering for America Plan” — instituted to improve service by consolidating processing and distribution operations — has done to the routine matter of receiving our daily mail.

It’s been a mess … to the point where protests were held, Congressional hearings were conducted and, after being reassured (if that’s the word one can use without again calling on our Herculean strength) in Joe Isuzu fashion that problems were resolved and adjustments made — the shebang was put on hold until next year.

“Any fool can make something complicated,” Woody Guthrie said. “It takes a genius to make it simple.”

There’s little doubt where on the fool/genius axis that Guthrie, no stranger himself to hard travelin’, would place those who decided that for a sympathy card to be sent three miles it must travel 545 instead.

Woody Guthrie, though, never worked for the post office — whereas, my father did.

Dad spent 20 years with PS of US, although not all at once. After his first stint, he tried his hand at a litany of odd jobs — a cab driver, truck driver, bus driver, lumberyard hand, plumbing supply stocker, night watchman, custodial engineer and window washer before winding back up sorting envelopes.

His last working years were spent sorting envelopes at a Mail Distribution Facility akin to the one in Medford that had fallen victim to an early wave of “Delivering for America.”

And like many ground-floor workers, he used a few choice words when identifying and addressing problem areas at his job that made perfect sense to those who actually had to do the work.

Which, of course, is the one thing to which developers of 10-year, blue-sky overhauls rarely pay enough attention.

Well, that and their customers.

The entire Magellan-like voyage of the sympathy card brought to mind wistful memories of an episode from the daze spent toiling at the Mail Tribune.

A new system for accessing help with computer issues was implemented which, as you would expect, came with a nifty list of related protocols to follow.

To receive assistance, we were to place a call to a “Help Desk” (Hercules is getting a workout this week), which would then notify the IT staff, which then would be allowed to do the actual helping.

The Help Desk was in India. The IT staff was downstairs … not from the Help Desk, but in the same building where the problem was occurring.

If we could break protocol, I could mutter a few choice words, walk down a flight of steps, go down the hall (on the way to the vending machines), stick my head in the IT office and get an answer to the problem.

According to the Information Superhighway, “The driving distance from Medford, Oregon, to India is: Complicated … you might even have to swim.”

Complicated. Yep, Woody Guthrie might say, that fits.