Gee, I Love Small-Town Midwest Living

[BobPalma]

My subscription copy to Rod & Custom arrived over a week ago. Most of the cover was torn off, as were the first several pages, or at least badly mutilated. Absolutely not a trace of the address label, but here it was anyway.

I happened to meet our regular postman -Justin- the day it was delivered. Justin said, "This is yours, right, Bob?" I said it probably was and he said, "Yeah, I saw it in the sort and kind of figured it was yours."

Today, over a full week later, most of the actual cover arrived all by itself in one of those, "Sorry We Shredded Your Mail" plastic envelopes:



Note the address label being almost entirely intact on this cover-only item, saying where whatever it had been attached to was to have gone.

People make fun of small-town midwesterners, but IMHO, it may just be jealousy. Where else would your postman recognize a shredded magazine as probably being yours and deliver it, only to have the actual addressed cover be delivered over a week later?

And our Brownsburg IN Post Office probably serves some 15,000 addresses! BP

[plwindish]

Bob, you'll have to tell the Post Office to be more careful reading the magazine while driving the truck hauling the mail!

[ddub]

Had a somewhat similar experience here in West Coast small town. I worked at the high school for 31 years. Our UPS driver, one of our graduates, would deliver packages (addressed to our home) to me at school. I didn't ask him to he just did it. Saved him a trip to our rural address and kept our packages secure. I doubt that UPS would have approved.

Two more amusing small town stories. Not long after we moved into an even smaller town, my wife wrote a check in a store. The clerk looked at the name and said "Oh, you're the people who bought the Smith place". Word gets around in small towns.

In that same town our well pump went out while I was at work. Judy called the neighbor, a man in his 80's, to ask who to call. He called the repairman and came to supervise. He told the repairman "fix it right, she's a woman and can't fix it, her husband's a teacher and can't do anything." He was a very helpful neighbor nevertheless.

[jclary]

Yep...."Green Acres" personified! An example of the greatness of our heritage. When I learned that Eddie Albert was a Medal of Honor recipient...his mild mannered portrayal, on that show, took on and entirely new perspective. A great example of a survivor of desperate circumstances humbly and playfully romping through life in hard fought freedom.

Another reason I spent only three hours at the international meet in South Bend last year. If I had been alone, I probably would have pestered many of you to the point of boredom all week long. However, since my wife had never ventured that far from home before...it was worth the sacrifice for her to spend time in the small towns and Amish communities of northern Indiana. Although, we visited some of the "tourist traps," we spent quite a few hours and many miles off the beaten path. The childlike wonder in her countenance at the buggies, farms, small communities, and vast flat fields was well worth the trip.

[Bill Pressler]

Great story Bob, and I can relate!

Although my sister and her husband live in a very, very small town about nine miles east of Greenville, somehow their small post office has survived and they have gotten mail just addressed to "Harley and Darlene"! Also, I've been told by this guy's wife, that mail addressed to "Doc, Greenville, PA" once found its way to their house--Doc is in his early 80's and known by everybody in town and is considered pretty-much the town historian! (And no, he is not a doctor, but he did work at the Studebaker garage as a teenager and at a Historical Society presentation several years back, showed off how he could still fit in his old Studebaker shop coat!).

My father was the Superintendent of Mails at the Greenville post office (a position that no longer exists), and he used to complain that he'd get complaint phone calls about...UPS!

[wittsend]

I gave up on magazines years ago. What are they now..., $6-$7 a copy? They seem thinner than they were years ago and chock full of ads.

That said, it must nice to have the postal delivery know you - and care. In 20 years we have had probably 10 different carriers. They seem to get less social with each change. The latest carrier drove up last summer and told me to get him some water. What, he doesn't think ahead and bring his own? He can't politely ask? It was a hot day so I obliged and got him water, but as I recall he didn't even say thank you. Count yourself fortunate.

Tom

[studegary]

I gave up on magazines years ago. What are they now..., $6-$7 a copy? They seem thinner than they were years ago and chock full of ads.


Tom

I have been gradually giving up on magazine subscriptions after reaching 27 periodicals arriving on a regular basis. Some of the magazines have made it hard to quit. If you don't renew in advance, they usually keep coming up with better offers. When they get down to $5 per year, and some even offer a clock or hat with the subscription, I have renewed. The magazines need to keep their subscriber numbers up to sell expensive advertisements which is where the profit is. I am sure that my $5 subscription does not even pay for the mailing. Also, some of the car related magazines I have subscribed to since the early 1960s and have earlier individual issues so it is hard to stop them.

[JimC]

Gary,

Just stop sending them money and see what happens. You might find that you get several years of free magazines! A few years before we started working in the group home we run, there was a girl who broke the no subscription rule and set up a magazine subscription to the home. This girl only paid for one year, and was long gone more than a year before we arrived at the job. March of this month, three years after starting this job, is the first month a magazine didn't arrive. Doing the math, she paid for 12 issues, and received about 45 additional issues she never paid for! And in those 45 months, both us and our predecessors contacted the magazine company several times in writing and by phone telling them this kid was no longer here.

[jclary]

OK...now it's time to really run this thread off the road! My wife is the magazine ordering culprit in our house. Even the magazines targeted for me (the ones she thought I would like) are addressed to her. Since she has a first name most often given to males...it is funny how she gets targeted. You know these companies shop these names and addresses around. She has gotten Field & Stream, Handyman, Organic Gardening, motorcycle, car, and shop tool oriented publications.

What all of these publications seem to have in common, (at least it is my perception) is what I call "short billing." You have a year's subscription, but after about 4 months...they begin to bill you again, telling you, your subscription is about to expire and urge you to re-subscribe.

[Lark Parker]

Small town attribute. Back when they had telephone operators, my Navy buddy in California called his parents in Columbia, MO. Upon receiving no answer, the telephone operator said, "Just a minute Tom, I think I saw him going into the barber shop.I'll try there." The call to his dad was completed at the shop.

[Andy R.]

It ain't just small towns. The mail carrier for our neighborhood in San Francisco has delivered cards from some of my wife's students with nothing but the name, city and zip (they only know her neighborhood.

Same with our UPS guy. When our neighborhood was being targeted by a package thief (until he got bear sprayed - look it up) he held the packages and brought them to the nearby playground where she takes our youngest to play.

There's good people all over the place...

[Swifster]

I've never lived in a small town. Lakeland is probably the smallest town I've live in and it still has 97,000. Suburban guy all my life. Growing up, we thought St. Clair Shores (MI) was a small town because it was only 12 square miles. But we also had 3 high schools.

EDIT: OK, I've also live in Eastpointe, MI and they had a population of 35,000 at the time. I lived in St. Charles, MO for a year and they were at 57,000.

[aenthal]

Not limited to small towns.
I live in a suburb of Los Angeles, and about 15 years ago I bought a vintage book on eBay. It wasn't desperately valuable, but it was old enough that I was never going to find another.
Package came. I opened it. It was empty. It had postage indicating it had weighed 9 ounces at the time it was posted, but it was just an empty bubble bag when it arrived.
I e-mailed the seller and figured I might get a refund, but I would never get the book.

Two days later, the doorbell rang.
There was a postal employee holding the missing book in his hands. He said he thought it was mine.
It was indeed. No wrapper, label, or sticker on it. He just handed it to me.

Of course I have had the reverse experience too.
I live in California. I was at a friend's house in Michigan, and I needed a paper right away.
I asked a person at home to overnight mail it to me.
He did not know there were overnight flat mailers, so he used a box. There was just the one envelope in the whole box.

What happened between his mailing and my receipt, I could not tell you. But the critical paper did not arrive overnight as he had paid for, or the next day, or even the day after that.
Four days later the box hits my friend's doorstep.
It was sealed, looked normal, so I opened it. The envelope I had wanted 4 days earlier was in there. But so was an umbrella.
I called home and asked him why in the world he sent me an umbrella. I was in suburban Detroit, not a rain forest. It was a nice gift, but puzzling.
The guy who mailed it to me asked "what umbrella. I did not send an umbrella."

I have no clue whose umbrella it was, or how they concluded it had fallen out of my box, but the post office gave me a bonus umbrella. And somebody who was supposed to get one, never did.

[BobPalma]

'Good to hear these happy stories from all over! BP

[Bob Bryant]

... Another reason I spent only three hours at the international meet in South Bend last year. If I had been alone, I probably would have pestered many of you to the point of boredom all week long. However, since my wife had never ventured that far from home before...it was worth the sacrifice for her to spend time in the small towns and Amish communities of northern Indiana. Although, we visited some of the "tourist traps," we spent quite a few hours and many miles off the beaten path. The childlike wonder in her countenance at the buggies, farms, small communities, and vast flat fields was well worth the trip.

Mrs. Clary may have enjoyed Shipshewana if it was one of the communities you visited. I grew up a few miles east in South Milford, but my family on both sides were residents in the early 1900's. I have a 1903 Bryant-Freeby Hardware Store calendar. It says that they sold wagons and buggies, but I have never determined whether the wheeled vehicles were South Bend products. Bryant was my grandfather and Freeby was my uncle. Another uncle had a restaurant there. My mother graduated from SHS in 1922. Shipshewana has become a tourist mecca since I left the area in the 50's.

South Milford, IN was a typical small town..no blinker light! There were few secrets, but people were friendly, warm, and caring. My mother worked part-time in the one-person P.O. in her later years. It was the perfect job for her, as she got paid and was able to see all of her friends. Locals would sit on benches waiting for the mail to get sorted and share the latest news, "Did you hear...!"