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The U.S. Postal Service may
issue a commemorative stamp depicting one of America's most quaint
institutions -- the government service that delivered pieces of paper from
one person to another.
"That was weird," a teenager said to her father after he told her that
people used to send paper messages.
The letters took several days to arrive and involved a lot of labor by
government employees who sorted and hand-carried them.
Sometimes by the time your message arrived the contents didn't matter any
more.
When the teenager asked what a post office was, her father explained that
it was where you went to buy little pieces of colored stick-on paper to
prove you had paid to send your message.
But the government encouraged people not to use the stick-ons, suggesting
they hoard them instead. That way employees didn't have to deliver
messages the customers paid for.
There was an army of such employees, commanded by a Postmaster General.
His main job (there never was a female Postmaster General) was to
determine how much more he could charge each year for the little stick-ons
that people were encouraged not to use.
The general's army wore blue uniforms, even in the south, and would spend
all day walking from house to house. It provided work for a lot of people
delivering circulars that provided more work for employees at local
landfills.
Sometimes, recipients got annoyed and wrote "Refused" on an envelope and
the army had to take it back to the sender. This provided even more jobs.
By the time you read this article, it may be old news. The vacationing
reporter mailed it in.
__________
Check out our previous article:
Charles and
Camilla
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