I married into a post office family. Hubby’s paternal grandfather
was the assistant postmaster in the city of Milwaukee, holding the highest
non-political job in the PO of that city. As a result, the family had what some
would call a misguided belief that the post office could do no wrong. In those days
(1930s and 1940s), the department was much better funded than it is today, in
part because there were fewer alternatives. UPS, FedEx and DHL weren’t even a
glimmer in anyone’s eye. The telephone was the only threat.
Fast forward to the late 1970s, when now-hubby and I decided
to get married. We told our parents, everyone was happy, and we began making
plans. At the time, I was working as a college reference librarian in upstate New
York, answering questions about primary source material and the location of the
library bathrooms.
Soon after we had announced our intention, I was
sitting at the reference desk under the huge stained-glass window in the Gothic Revival
cathedral of learning. A student delivering the afternoon mail tossed an 8 x 11
manila envelope onto the desk. “Looks like this is personal,” she said. And it
was indeed addressed to me. There was no return address. It was somewhat lumpy,
as if there were Life Savers inside.
Instead of Life Savers, the envelope contained a used shirt cardboard covered with rings.
The rings were taped to the cardboard. A note in my prospective father-in-law’s
writing said, “You might want these now.”
I was stunned. The envelope contained jewelry worth many thousands
of dollars. Sapphires, diamonds, platinum, gold, and silver rings—seven in all.
They included the bridal set worn by my mother-in-law, who had died many years
before I met her son. Father-in-law had purchased it in the New York City diamond
district on 47th Street in the late 1940s. I have worn it ever since we were
married a few months after the remarkable reference desk delivery.
The envelope was sent first class, uninsured. Later, when I
expressed my surprise that father-in-law had sent such a valuable shipment by
regular surface mail, he shrugged and asked, “Why wouldn’t I? It’s always
worked before. That’s why we have post offices—to send things.”
I don’t know if we have post offices so we can send diamonds
to future daughters-in-law. I do know that faith in government agencies like
the Post Office is a thing of the past. We got married just in time, right before
the war on the federal government began in earnest. If we had waited a few
months or years, this story might not have had such a happy ending. Or it might
never have occurred at all; father-in-law might have had time to rethink his
devotion to the agency that employed his own father for so many years.
