This is the ultimate story of "Oops! Wha-happened?" by the USPS. It should be showcased on 'Sick Sad World' if it were a reality tv series. But enough of my sarcastic commentary. Nah, just kidding.
Fri Dec 14, 10:35 PM ET Courtesy of: Associated Press
OBERLIN, Kan. - A postcard featuring a color drawing of Santa Claus and a young girl was mailed in 1914, but its journey was slower than Christmas. It just arrived in northwest Kansas.
(And this is news how exactly? Talk about snail mail. I could probably walk, no... crawl my mail across town faster than it takes to mail it in my teeny tiny area on any given average day.)
The Christmas card was dated Dec. 23, 1914, and mailed to Ethel Martin of Oberlin, apparently from her cousins in Alma, Neb.
It's a mystery where it spent most of the last century, Oberlin Postmaster Steve Schultz said. "It's surprising that it never got thrown away," he said. "How someone found it, I don't know."
(That's such a relief to know how it was "found" by "someone"... perhaps they were rummaging through the 'unemptied 93 year old trash bin'?)
Ethel Martin is deceased (No shit?), but Schultz said the post office wanted to get the card to a relative.
(That's a nice sentiment Schultz. It's the thought that counts, 93 years late is better than never. It may have been Ethel's only contact with her relatives in years and likely dozens if not hundreds of your postal representatives were too drunk or too dense to use a map & realise that Kansas is a far cry from Illinois.)
That's how the 93-year-old relic ended up with Bernice Martin, Ethel's sister-in-law. She said she believed the card had been found somewhere in Illinois.
(I'm just surprised it didn't end up in Canada, ok... bad geography joke. Nevermind the spell check joke then.)
"That's all we know," she said. "But it is kind of curious. We'd like to know how it got down there."
(Honestly, so would I. I'm sure most people who read this national story would. In fact someone out there reading it was probably thinking, "I should have sent my x-mas present MUCH sooner". But some things will continue to remain a mystery, like Bigfoot, the Lochness Monster, if Elvis is still alive and the secret ingredient(s) in Crispy Creme Donuts.)
The card was placed inside another envelope with modern postage for the trip to Oberlin — the one-cent postage of the early 20th century wouldn't have covered it, Martin said.
(Oh, dear, you mean "someone" had to splurge after 93 years and come up with the other .40 cents for postage & "handling"? What will they ever do now, how will their kids go to college? Oh my gawd, dear lord in heaven, it's a miracle! ...that the post office has delivered any mail correctly since.)
"We don't know much about it," she said. "But wherever they kept it, it was in perfect shape."
(Hmm, looks like somebody is on Santa's Naughty List this year. And for once it's not me.)
