A Taxing Day at the Post Office : Filing deadline: The last call to settle up with Uncle Sam is hectic and stressful, but it’s also ‘a fun night for us,’ says a postmaster.

Van Nuys Postmaster Kerry Wolny peered out his second-floor window Thursday looking for the lady on roller skates.

You know, the one who showed up at the San Fernando Valley’s main post office on Sherman Way last April decked out in a pair of shorty shorts and in-line skates. With a smile, she posed an offer few could refuse: to personally carry motorists’ tax returns to the drop-off box--like any dutiful postal carrier, helping them avoid the gloom, gridlocked traffic and dark of night--all, of course, for the price of a buck or two.

That is, until postal officials slapped a cancellation stamp on her entrepreneurial spirit.

Welcome to the U.S. post office--public funny farm, three-ringed circus and stand-up comedy routine rolled into one hectic, stress-ridden day. That’s April 15, otherwise known to millions of American workers as Tax Day, the time “Uncle Sam Wants You” to ante up.

It’s the day that strikes fear and loathing into procrastinators nationwide, the time they know the government has given them--holy smokes!--a deadline . And officials know that each and every April 15 brings out the lunacy in even the calmest of folks.

Here in the Valley, Wolny was serving his first year as postmaster. But he knew what to expect on this fateful day. He had been forewarned.

That is, he knew to expect the lines outside his main post office--as well as numerous others throughout the Valley--to snake around corners and into the street like the 2 a.m. queue at some Jack In The Box.

He knew enough to expect the later-than-late filers to be lying on the floor of the post office, their legs spraddled through the crowd like a bony obstacle course as they filled out their forms and anxiously eyed the clock hands creep toward midnight.

He knew that the traffic on the San Diego Freeway would be so clogged with post office-bound motorists that Caltrans officials would close the exit at Sherman Way and traffic cops would be provided to help tame the bumper-to-bumper traffic and soothe the feeding-frenzy mentality.

“Really, it’s a fun night for us in a lot of ways,” Wolny said. “We’re staying open until midnight at the main post office and supplying our workers with ‘Midnight Madness’ T-shirts to lighten the mood. Hopefully, the public will see the humor in the night as well.”

Wolny knew that last-minute tax filers would boost the overall mail flow through his post office from the regular daily load of 1 million letters and packages to 1.4 million pieces, a whopping 40% increase.

But there were a few minor details Thursday that Wolny didn’t expect: For one, a group of demonstrators from the Ross Perot splinter group United We Stand, America showed up with signs protesting tax dollars’ being spent on defense rather than on reducing the deficit.

And, oh, there were also the local radio station deejays who showed up at the post office with a “Dunk the IRS Man” booth, allowing disgruntled taxpayers to try to dunk a character dressed as an IRS agent.

Did Wolny worry that he might be next?

“That’s why I left quickly,” he said. “But, lucky for us, it was a happy crowd.”

On a hazy Thursday, as time ticked away, people patiently waited in lines at post offices throughout the Valley.

People like Camilla Ruth, a 30-year-old computer programmer, who pulled up to deposit her state and federal returns with a good 11 hours to spare.

“I’ve picked up some bad traits from my mother,” she said, decked out in a fashionable X ball cap and Lycra stretch pants. “She always taught me to file my returns on the 15th, even if I’m getting a refund. That way, I’ll still have my money when all those other people have already spent their return checks.”

At the Sherman Way office, officials had posted “No Parking” signs along the street out front to give everyone a fair shot at making a last-minute dash to glory: waiting to the very last nanosecond to get that April One-Five cancellation mark on their return envelope.

“People are people,” Wolny said. “Luckily, the early birds outnumber the rest.”

The rest being, of course, your 11:59 p.m., April 15 tax return filers.

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