Thursday, I think I stumbled upon an explanation. I stopped T-Hoe at the side of the county blacktop road (as all denizens of Hillmomba are wont to do) so I could get the mail out of EmBee. This is what I found inside.
Uh huh. It was my letter to The Pony. The one from JUNE 21st!!!
Let the record show that Mrs. Hillbilly Mom's handwriting is perfectly legible. Emphasis on PERFECT. As you can see from the photo, my zip code and state are representative of my penmanship.
The Pony has lived at this address for TWO YEARS now. I've used the exact same address each time. The one The Pony gave me when he moved in. He used to get his letters on Wednesdays, after I'd mailed them on Fridays. Then they started coming later in the week. Then they stopped arriving altogether. He finally got the one I was worried about, with his new health insurance card. In fact, he has gotten other mail, and a couple of letters, since this one was returned.
I didn't show the top, but the stamp was cancelled out of St. Louis on June 22nd. This return label date is July 10th. Where was this letter languishing all that time? It hasn't been opened or tampered with. The enclosed allowance I send The Pony instead of scratchers was inside, unharmed.
Here's my theory. Since this apartment complex is considered campus housing, and their mail gets sorted at a campus post office...I think at the end of spring semester, somebody new took over sorting duties, and is MORE THAN incompetent.
Good thing I always include my return address.
4 comments:
I hope it isn't college students or college graduates who are sorting that mail. Otherwise, we're headed for a world of trouble.
We had a substitute mail carrier today. One of my tenants was expecting a package from his son. The son was notified via email that the package was undeliverable.... the reason being that my mailbox was too full. We have one of those big over sized rural boxes and the mail carrier will always bring packages too big to the door. I was outside and saw the delivery. Never came to my door and, no, my box was nowhere near full. And yet, they keep raising postage rates. Good help is hard to find.
50 cents? Stamps here are $1 and even with that the postal service is a bit iffy sometimes.
I think you should contact the college ringmaster or whoever is in charge there and explain the mail problem. Otherwise, is The Pony able to get a locked box at the local post office? I used to have one when I lived somewhere else where the mailboxes were getting broken in to.
Sioux,
Well, we're in a world of trouble. I looked it up, and the campus post office, that distributes all mail for campus housing, employs two regular postal personnel, and two WORK STUDY COLLEGE STUDENTS. Looks like I can't even safely send The Pony a handbasket, once I get my proposed handbasket factory up and running.
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Kathy,
We've had that problem with FedEx, saying that WE WERE A BUSINESS THAT WAS CLOSED. Genius was expecting something electronic (thus vital for his survival), and hit the roof when he checked the tracking. He found out where the route guy was, and we drove a couple miles to where he was stopped, and pre-teen Genius confronted him in the store, and got his package!
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River,
I am trying a last resort, putting the apartment complex name on it in ALL CAPS, as I remail the old letter. I'm also going to ask my local post office today if they can look up the address and see if it has changed. If these solutions don't work, I'll be calling the campus post office. There's no reason for mail that has gone through for two years to suddenly be undeliverable. I'm guessing it's a student worker issue.
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