Postal Mystery: Magazines From Twlight Zone Delivered

[prwhite]

Nearly 50 years after a Maryland resident’s late father subscribed to "Sport" magazine, a stack of issues from 1969 & 1970 arrived. One copy shows Ted Williams, then manager of the Washington Senators. Another shows Sonny Jurgensen of the Washington Redskins.

Did USPS send the magazines 50 years late, or did someone else store the copies? Two clues:

• The ZIP code on the first arriving magazine was the former ZIP code for the area that was later changed,
• That magazine also had a bar code. The recipient thinks the magazines were with the postal service all that time and were delivered 49 years late.

The post office has moved several times, and magazines sometimes make it back into the mail stream. A representative said, “USPS makes every attempt to deliver what they are given”.

 

[MailGuru]

Several times over the years, when we've picked up postal equipment from the USPS (sacks, trays, etc.) you might find some mail at the bottom of a supposedly empty sack. We just return it to the USPS. It is a very complicated, convoluted, chaotic place with lots of corners, nicks & crannies where mail can fall in to and get misplaced in rare instances.

I have to admire their integrity, though.

Finding unimportant mail (magazines, etc.), that should have been delivered 50 years ago, and making a decision to go ahead and deliver it and take the backlash & ridicule instead of just trashing it speaks highly of their honesty and integrity. A lesser institution would have just trashed it -- after 50 years --- none would be the wiser.

 

[Slammer]

Then again isn´t it wonderful to get something 50 years later and have a loooooooong stroll down memory lane?

 

[Shawnd]

We took over a retired Post Office location, it was amazing what you find when you take the old mailboxes apart. All kinds of stuff hidden in between, but the oldest mail pieces I found was 30 years old with the old old postage meter marks on them. I put the mail pieces back in the mail stream so I don't know if they got delivered or not. No doubt they went to move or recycle an old piece of equipment and this was stuck inside it.

Story will repeat when they retire the FSS machines.