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Improbable things happen frequently at scale. One possible scenario is just that this card got lost twice. It could have slipped behind a counter at the origin
by tobyjsullivan 6y ago
Improbable things happen frequently at scale. One possible scenario is just that this card got lost twice.
It could have slipped behind a counter at the original post office and been uncovered when that office was decommissioned 35 years later. Then it would have made its way to a newer sorting facility where either it could have been misplaced again or, more likely, been stuffed in a cabinet somewhere (as I doubt USPS was as adamant about delivering lost mail in the 1950's). That facility could easily be in operation until today - or decommissioned very recently.
No idea if anything like this actually occurred. But at 400M+ letters / day, USPS has the scale for unusual circumstances like this to be somewhat regular occurrences.
- wtn 6y agoUSPS was probably much more adamant about delivering lost mail in the 1950s. The level of service was higher, with twice daily delivery.
- codezero 6y agoI never knew they did twice daily deliver, time to google up some more info!
- _whiteCaps_ 6y agohttp://500years.royalmailgroup.com/gallery/delivery-frequency/ http://500years.royalmailgroup.com/gallery/delivery-frequenc... In the UK it was up to 12 times / day in cities!
- ghaff 6y agoTo some degree, I'm sure it was a plot device but 19th century English novels often depended on rapid/same-day communications via letter at least in the environs of London.
- eru 6y agoCompare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Penny_Post https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Penny_Post
- hdjdbtbgwjsn 6y agoThat was considered standard then in London. Royal Mail even had its own underground railways in London.
- Spooky23 6y agoIt was more in some places. My grandma and aunt would mail letters like IMs in 1930s NYC.
- codezero 6y agoI guess the telephone was able to replace a lot of those messages - and is possibly the reason they dialed back in the 1950s?
- ghaff 6y agoProbably a reason. Also a lot of middle/upper class people were leaving cities in the US. Bike messenger services also were a big thing in cities a few decades ago. Email (and probably general acceptance of electronic scans) replaced a lot of shuffling around of paper documents. I was sort of amused a month or so back, when I had to do some financial transfers, a lot of the paperwork that would have formerly involved going into an office and getting notarized stamps could now happen with a combination of a phone call, mailed paperwork, and phone verification.