Giddy-up

Once upon a time, if I mailed a letter on Monday to my parents in Gardena, CA (a suburb of Los Angeles), it often arrived there by Thursday.

But times have changed.

My little brother’s birthday was on Jan 21 and I remembered to send him a birthday card with some money.

Here he is on Super Bowl Sunday. 

I imagine he was disappointed at the outcome of the game.

Last year when I mailed his card, I left one number off the address on the envelope, and even though I had included the extra digits on the ZIP code that should have sorted the letter to his house, it did not arrive. I got it back in the mail several weeks later.

This year I was very careful to write the correct address but was little late getting it in the mail. I forgot the post office would be closed on the Jan 18th for MLK’s birthday, so the letter was not postmarked until the 19th.

I knew it probably would be a little late.

A little late?

My brother called me 2 days ago (on the 9th) to let me know the card had arrived. It took 20 days.

Now when the Pony Express was delivering mail in the 1860s, they managed to get a letter from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, in 10 days. That’s about 1800 miles. It is 1500 miles from here to my brother’s house in Lakewood. 

We obviously can’t reactive the Pony Express, but my goodness. Something definitely needs to be done about the U.S. Postal Service. And I don’t think we can blame it on COVID.