GrandMa
MXXXXXXX
Texas
Always got to the correct GrandMa.
This was good until she died in 1969.
All other GrandMa’s had to have an additional name.
On The Howard Stern Show, Howard’s sidekick, Robyn Quivers, often gets mail with nothing on the envelope other than “Nigger Quivers” :dubious: by fans who just want to see if it gets delivered.
You mean they don’t have Rural Free Delivery? I thought every post office in the US (that has a rural area to deliver to) had to do that.
The town I grew up in in Montana (mid 70’s-80’s) had Rural Free Delivery, but they took that rather literally. If you were one of the thousand-or-so residents who lived in town, they did not deliver your mail. Instead, most people paid for a P.O. Box, but if you really didn’t want to pay, you could choose General Delivery and pick your mail up from the post office window every day. Most people (including my family) had a P.O. Box because it was easier…that area of the post office had longer hours, and there was no chance of waiting in line. When I was older, since I passed the post office on the way home from school, I had the key for our P.O. Box, and I would pick up the mail every day.
Sometimes, confused out-of-town relatives would address mail to our street address, and it always made its way into our box. However, you know you’re in a small town when those relatives can address UPS packages to your post office box and UPS still delivers them to your house!
I read a story in grade school, a true story but I’ve forgotten the name. A black couple was driving one night and saw a bag fall off a truck. They were the only ones around. So they recovered the bag and found it full of money from a bank, I think it was like $500,000. Must have been a Brinks truck. They easily could have kept it. Instead, they returned every penny. So they got a reward from the bank and instant fame. But when the guy went back to work, everybody sneered at him. “Why you going back to work? You had $500,000.” But other people respected him, incredible as it was that anyone could really be that honest.
So the story goes that the Post Office delivered letters to him addressed with nothing more than “Honest Man, USA.”
And now the flipside: my firstname+lastname is unique within the U.K., but I’ve often had mail delayed or lost. Of course, the Post Office don’t exactly have a good reputation around here. A flatmate used to work for the PO and he said that being fired for stealing or not delivering mail was quite regular.
I mailed a book to Bucharest a month ago, and have been feeling a lot of sympathy for the mailman who needs to find this address:
Intr Reconstructiei
NR 10
BL29
SC2
ET9
AP83
Sector3
031726
I think it must be in the Matrix. (What can all those numbers mean?)
Rush Limbaugh, back in his TV days held up a enevlope addresses to “Rush Limbaugh, NYC” which apparently got to him through the USPS.
TIn the Montana town where I have my store, there is no option for mail delivery, and this is a town of over 2,000 people! P.O. boxes, however, are free.
Not terribly difficult.
As a sorter, I regularly receive mail for television personalities. There are only three commercial networks (and two government ones), and I know their delivery post offices. Once they get to those offices, the networks would be amongst the biggest businesses in their area, and once they get to the networks, the people in the mail room would just have the items sent to the stars’ dressing rooms.
Same goes for poiliticians. “Parliament House” gets there.
I believe it would be technically possible for a letter to get to my mother with “Surname 2805” on it, posted from any major country. The local sorters would know the four digit code is either Australia or South Africa, and if it goes to South Africa by mistake, that would only delay it. When it gets to my mum’s village here eventually, the place only has about two hundred people, and the post office is part of the general store. The owner knows my mum.
As a postal worker, you could send me a letter at work, and the address would be just as short (and I live in a city).
When I was opening an account with an online brokerage several years ago, they completely boned my address when sending me the application forms and mailed them to:
Sublight
205 ABC Apartments
Japan
No town, no state, no postal code. Somehow, the post office found me. Kinda scary.
According to the USPS, an area needs 2500 residents or 750 possible delivery points in order to establish city delivery. So, your town must be just under the mark.
Impressive! Diogenes (not the Doper) would have been envious.
Interestingly, when the new post office building was constructed a while back, they put the matter up to a vote: The USPS could either build a smaller post office and provide street delivery (smaller PO because fewer boxes required), or stick with PO boxes and not offer delivery. The majority of residents voted for staying with PO boxes. It appears that picking up the mail is the social high point of the day for many of the town’s residents.