Looking forward towards Amazon Snowtot. In all seriousness though, the discussion later in the article explaining how the postal service was a lot more persona

Looking forward towards Amazon Snowtot. In all seriousness though, the discussion later in the article explaining how the postal service was a lot more personal in those days explains it. Just take any piece of literature from around then that has a mailman as a character, and it's always someone who's on first-name basis with everyone in the village. Combine that with a lot more limited transportation options in general in those times, and the idea of shipping the kid a few miles down the road by mail doesn't seem such a bad idea. And of course the occurrences were rare enough to be newsworthy.